


Fifteen Hours

by Blue



Series: Angelus ex Machina [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Magnus Bane, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Parabatai Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-20 11:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13716399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue/pseuds/Blue
Summary: On an otherwise average afternoon, Alec goes missing. Between a frantic High Warlock and the Shadowhunter Institute on high alert, New York's Shadow World is quickly thrown into crisis mode.aka The High Intensity Series Interlude





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> See the end notes for a content warning.
> 
> This is a sequel to The Strength of (un)Broken Bonds. You don't _need_ to have read that one first, just run with the idea that the parabatai bond has grown stronger and it's information that Alec, Jace, Magnus, Clary, Max, and Izzy have been keeping on the down low.
> 
> This was written before season 3, so it doesn't take that into account.
> 
> A very sincere thank you to Bonibaru for beta work, which in this case led to an entire scene being re-written (and improved dramatically). Bonibaru has not beta'ed the summary or the notes, so there's probably a run-on sentence in here somewhere. I'm working on it.

Magnus ignored the chime of an incoming text message as he was nearly finished with the translation he was working on and unwilling to be torn away. Ironically, it was his own work, but he'd written it in Spanish and the client needed it in Dutch. It should have been a simple job but he'd spent the entire time horrified at some of his own choices _(bat wings?_ for that application? had he been that oblivious 200 years ago to how alligator teeth were far superior?). He'd ended up not only translating but also writing a supplemental text with additions and corrections that was nearly as long as the original. Magnus shuddered at the thought of how many copies were floating around in the world unable to be corrected and with so many terrible decisions on display.

His phone rang and Magnus sighed, summoning it to hand. Apparently the outside world was determined to come knocking. He glanced at the ID and answered the call. "Isabelle! Your dulcet tones are always a delight but is this important?"

"I don't know. Is Alec there?"

At the tone of her voice, Magnus put down the pen he was holding and straightened up. "No, he said he was meeting you this afternoon to shop for Max's birthday presents."

"Yeah, he's late. Not a lot late, but… I don't know. Sisterly intuition? I mean, he's usually early or sends a text if he gets held up. He's not answering his phone and he wasn't working this afternoon so he's not distracted by paperwork. The only other option was you."

"I _am_ an excellent distraction, I will admit, but unfortunately not in this case," Magnus said, standing and grabbing his jacket. "Did you call blondie?"

"No, not yet. That was my next step."

"Is he at the Institute this afternoon?"

"He should be."

"I'll tell you what, I'll try calling Alec and, if he doesn't answer my call either, then I'll pop over there and make sure everything's okay. You stay there and wait for him."

"Yeah, that sounds good." She sighed. "I feel like I'm overreacting. He's a valuable target but Jace would've already sent out the emergency alert if he'd sensed anything wrong."

"Better safe than sorry, love.” Magnus attempted to sound far less concerned than he actually was. "Text me if he appears."

Magnus started gathering magic even as he ended the call with Isabelle and dialed Alec. The phone rang through, but there was no answer and it tripped over to his painfully short voicemail message: _This is Alec. Leave a message._

Magnus opened up a portal.

 

* * *

 

Jace was sitting in Ops reviewing the files of a half dozen incoming assignees when he distantly heard a portal opening up in the entryway. A few beats later, Magnus came in and made a beeline for Jace as soon as he spotted him.

"Am I forgetting something?" Jace asked.

"Probably, but aren't we all?" Magnus sounded chipper but there was an urgency in the tilt of his body and the restlessness of his hands. "Have you heard from Alec recently?"

"No." Jace swung the chair around. His own hand was suddenly itching to drop to the hilt of the dagger at his thigh. "He was meeting Izzy this afternoon. Why?"

"Izzy just called and he didn't show. She was worried." Yeah, Izzy clearly wasn't the only one. "I tried calling him, but it went to voicemail. I told her I'd pop over here and see if you'd heard from him."

False alarm then. Jace relaxed back into the chair. "One of you could have just called me. I would have noticed if anything was wrong." Alec's heartbeat was slow and steady in the quiet corners of Jace's brain but he nudged the bond awake. Alec's heartbeat remained slow and steady. _Very_ slow and steady. Jace frowned. "He's… asleep?"

Magnus pulled out his phone and started texting, presumably Izzy. Jace tried getting a sense of direction for Alec but there was nothing, just a soft void where his parabatai should be. The bond was quickly getting restless, feeding off Jace's growing unease. Jace pulled out his phone, but just then Sonia walked by so he stopped her instead. "I think that's Clary up in the training room. Go tell her I need her here and it's an emergency."

'Emergency' was the magic word inside the Institute walls. Sonia sprinted off. Jace stood up and looked back to Magnus, who was still texting and now looking actively worried. "Do you have anything of Alec's on you?"

Magnus, still looking at his phone, shook his head. "No, but I can retrieve something from the loft that would probably be a stronger tracker than anything here."

"Do that." As Magnus started to open a portal it occurred to Jace that the middle of Ops wasn't the best place for tracking. "Magnus! Meet us in Alec's office!" Magnus waved that he'd heard even as he stepped through the portal and disappeared.

Clary came trotting up with a grinning Max on her heels, both of them still armed with seraph swords. "Hey, what's up?" she asked, wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of one hand.

"Sonia said it was an emergency!" Max sounded excited as always at the potential for mayhem.

"Yeah, Alec's missing."

The grin dropped off Max's face.

"C'mon, we're heading to his office." Jace lead the way out of Ops, Clary and Max following. "I can't get a sense of his location so we're going to try together. Magnus went to get a token from the loft."

Magnus was waiting for them by the time they walked through the door. "Shirt he slept in last night or his bow?" he asked, holding one in each hand. Jace hesitated a moment, eyes snagging on the bow. Of course he didn't have it. He'd been meeting Izzy to go shopping. But at best he had a small dagger at his ankle, his stele, and a witchlight. Fuck.

"Shirt," Clary handed Max the sword she'd been carrying and pulled out her stele. "It'll be a good supplement to the bond."

Jace nodded, stripping off his own shirt. "Yeah, balance it out." He traded shirts with Magnus as Clary stepped up to put the tracking rune over his heart.

"Ready?" she asked. Jace nodded again, planting his feet and bracing himself. He could see her drop almost instantly into a different headspace. Clary didn't just draw runes, especially the ones Ithuriel had gifted her. She pulled them up from some deep well like she was harnessing something half wild, giving the raw power form and purpose.

She etched the tracking rune into his skin like a slow motion brand, the power rising up in his skin and mixing with the restless bond. When she finished the last stroke Jace's vision haloed out as his pupils dilated. Closing his eyes against the brightness, he tightened his jaw down against the surge, holding fast to both the now angry bond and the bottled power of the rune. He clutched the shirt over the raw skin of the rune, over his heart. Clary slipped behind him, her arm wrapping around his ribs so she could join her hand to his. As they held the shirt together, her other hand slid down just under his waistband to cover the parabatai rune. He settled his free hand over hers and, with the loop complete, the world dissolved as his focus was yanked inward like a collapsing star. A wash of red-gold — Clary — surged up from the depths. The power in their blood poured through the rune, his bond with Alec snapped and crackled, the fabric of Alec's shirt in their hands a focus and a catalyst in one.

_Alec_

There was a flash of Alec for just a moment, in the loft, wearing the shirt they were holding, and smiling at something. The image dissolved and there was a heartbeat of nothing before Jace felt the tracking rune latch onto the bond, arrowing down the hard gold light that stretched out into the darkness. It couldn't have been long, maybe two heartbeats, but suddenly there was an invisible barrier and the red cast of the tracking rune fractured out into thousand threads, looping back into itself and fizzling into nothing.

Jace opened his eyes. "Fuck. _"_

One of Clary's hands slid up and the other slid down to meet at his waist. She leaned her forehead against the back of his neck. "The bond kept going, we just couldn't."

"Yeah, that's what I got." He looked over at Magnus to find him covering Max's eyes with one hand. He blinked. "What are you doing?"

"I am almost _fifteen,"_ Max bitched, "and they were _tracking."_

"Oh, you know," Magnus said faintly, dropping his hand. "It was rather… bright."

Behind him Clary giggled, slightly hysterically.

Magnus shook himself. "So that didn't sound like you found anything."

"No, not really," Clary replied, letting go of Jace so he could pull a shirt back on. "He's there, but the tracker shatters before it actually gets to him. I didn't even get a general sense of direction."

"So probably water?" Max suggested.

"But it's _Alec._ I should be able to—" Jace broke off that line of thought. Frustration was a useless distraction in an emergency. "Okay, we have to cover the bases. Magnus, you try and see if you get anything more than we did. While you do that, we'll start tracking the CCTV back. He was just meeting Izzy so he wouldn't have activated his runes. Fortunately, Alec can be predictable."

 

* * *

 

Magnus' warlock tracking was a bust. Even after three attempts, he couldn't sense Alec at all, let alone a location. He wasn't happy about it either and he'd stormed back into Ops in a bad temper.

Fortunately Tatiana was on duty. She was the fastest in the Institute at dealing with the city's surveillance infrastructure. Max perched on the chair next to her, watching intently as she worked backward from the meeting point, accessing and skimming at high speed through the CCTV feeds along Alec’s most likely route. Once Magnus had himself back under control, he and Clary made good attempts at patience during the tedious process, but Jace couldn't stop pacing for the itch under his skin. It didn't help when Izzy returned and started wearing a path in the floor tile with him.

If it had been a wider search radius or a longer time frame, it would have been like looking for a needle in a haystack. As it was, Tatiana was able to track down a sighting of Alec within an hour. Leapfrogging from there, they found one brief shot of him clearly unconscious, an arm over someone's shoulder, and then nothing. The camera quality was too poor to distinguish anything about the person holding him up other than their general height.

"Magic?" Jace asked, leaning closer to the monitor like it would resolve the blurry pixels into something sharper.

Magnus stood very straight and still. "Maybe, but it could be a dart to the neck just as easily. That fast of a disappearance, though, that was almost certainly a portal."

Jace rubbed at his eyes, shoving down the increasingly angry bond and trying to focus on the problem at hand. "Okay, first—"

The sudden pain came out of nowhere. Jace found himself on the floor, head pounding, jaw throbbing. He had his seraph dagger out and ready before he realized he was looking up at five confused faces. _Oh fuc—_

The next blow came from the other side, because people did tend to follow patterns when beating the shit out you. The first punch had shocked Alec awake and the bond had latched onto him immediately, yanking Jace half out of himself. Jace was holding onto his awareness of the Institute by the thinnest thread while Alec was muzzily trying to figure out what the fuck was going on and shut the bond back down. Jace barely managed to re-sheathe his blade before the next blow came, all while holding onto Alec and without losing himself in the process.

"Clary," he grated out, and she dropped down to straddle his waist, one hand sliding up under his shirt to cover the tracking rune. He saw her eyes flare gold before they both dropped like rocks straight down to the bond, the intense flare of power and speed of the descent knocking the breath out of him. They slid along it like flying.

Two heartbeats later the tracker shattered against the darkness again despite Jace feeling himself stretching further, extending out to Alec. He surfaced to Clary swearing, her teeth bared. The next hit was to his stomach — to Alec's stomach — and Jace doubled up, nearly bashing Clary in the face. "Off," he said, gasping for air. She rolled off and back up to her knees next to Magnus. He looked like he'd already drawn the obvious conclusion and was _pissed._

Jace lost time to the beating after that. Alec couldn't keep his eyes open enough to see the blows coming, couldn't brace against anything with the magic or drugs still in his system. Jace curled up in a ball and just hung on, unwilling to leave Alec alone.

He didn't lose consciousness, neither of them did, but once the blows finally stopped Alec was near enough to it. Jace didn't know how much more time passed but he eventually blinked upward and realized Max was kneeling over him. He stared up at Max, feeling like his lip was split and bleeding, like he was having a hard time getting enough air, like all his muscles were still sluggish, like he was strapped into a wooden chair, like he was laying on the floor in Ops, like there were definitely people he should be pissing off because he wasn't going to give them the satisfaction—

"Fuck," Jace said to the whole situation.

"Yeah," Max agreed, holding one of Jace's hands in his own.

Jace could hear Izzy's voice rising and falling a short distance away, shifting between cold anger and sweetly dangerous. Whoever she had called was getting a whole range of threats. Magnus sat on the floor behind him, out of sight but with one hand laying heavy on Jace's head. His voice was quieter than Izzy's but had an uncharacteristic calm that conveyed all the subtlety of an Institute wide alarm. There were other bodies moving around the edges as Ops ramped up to high alert. Clary appeared briefly with a tablet in hand and a look of concern. She yanked up his shirt to draw an iratze on his side, then disappeared again.

The iratze helped for a few minutes but Alec's disorientation and the effects of the beating continued filtering down the bond and fucking with Jace's perceptions. He drifted for a while, finally starting back to wakefulness at a gasp from Clary. He heaved his shoulders up and braced on his elbows while Max fretted and tried to help. Izzy, Clary, and Magnus were huddled around a glittery phone — Magnus' — with expressions ranging from Clary's wide-eyed _oh shit_ look to Izzy and Magnus' twin looks of complete and utter fury.

"What did you find?" Jace asked.

"I am going to dismantle him _slowly."_ Magnus' knuckles were white where he was gripping the phone.

It was Clary who finally looked up and answered, "He wasn't taken because he's the Head of the Institute. He was taken because—"

"He's _mine."_

Jace's own eyes weren't focusing consistently but he could tell Magnus had flat out lost the glamour on his. He was also pretty sure he was actually seeing red sparks around Magnus' hands and through the strands of his hair.

Clary side-eyed Magnus. She looked torn between edging closer to offer comfort and moving out of the danger zone. "It's a warlock by the name of Cynric. He sent Magnus a video."  
  
Jace took a moment to process that someone had kidnapped the Head of the New York Shadowhunter Institute, the significant other of the High Warlock of Brooklyn, and Jace's goddamn parabatai all in order to _deliberately_ piss off Magnus Bane.

"Does he have a death wish?" Jace asked.

"He's not from New York," Magnus snarled, still staring at his phone. Jace could hear distant, tinny thuds that he assumed he'd been feeling earlier. Was still feeling the effects of now. "He's an old enemy. It's possible he doesn't know anything about Alec besides that he's obviously a Shadowhunter and that he's _mine."_

Jace opened his mouth to argue that Magnus wasn't the only one in the room that Alec belonged to, but a self-preservation he didn't even know he had made him close it again. They could have that argument later.

Clary took a deep breath, set her shoulders, and put her hand over the screen of Magnus' phone. Magnus looked over at her and Jace couldn't see Magnus' expression, but he could guess. Clary stood her ground.

"If it's a warlock," Max said, "then him being on water isn't a given. There's wards that could block the tracking, right?"

"Yes." Magnus finally let Clary take the phone from him and shut off the video loop. "It's possible specific blocking wards would interfere. But that likely means…"

"He's not bait." Izzy's whip started a threatening rattle. "He's an _object lesson."_

"Send Maryse a fire letter." Jace activated his own iratze this time. His brain cleared of the drug's effects again, at least temporarily. Izzy's face was a mask, but the continuous shifting of her bracelet was an easy tell of what kind of mood she was in. "Clary you're acting head, at least until—" The room spun sideways and Jace blinked, suddenly realizing he was looking at the ceiling again. "Fuck."

A half dozen faces loomed over him for a moment. He blinked and it was an empty ceiling again, but he could hear Clary delegating tasks.

"Magnus." Magnus appeared and Jace held up a hand. "Help me to my room. I'm not doing this in the middle of Ops."

Jace didn't dare shut the bond down, even for the short trip to his room. If he did and couldn't get it back, they would lose their only connection to Alec. Using Magnus as a crutch and with Izzy's leverage, Jace managed to make it upright even with the room lurching. Despite a dozen iratzes along the way, it was a drunken path they staggered down the halls. With Max leading, Magnus' bulk and Izzy's quick thinking saved Jace from crashing into walls each time the drug rolled back over him through the bond.

"Definitely drugged," he explained to Magnus on the way. "He's still got it all in his system, but we're diluting the effects between us."

"Yeah, that cat's out of the bag," Max said as he dodged out of the way of Magnus dragging Jace through the doorway into his room. 

"What?" Jace asked even as he felt his knees buckle and Magnus' grip go tight as he took all of Jace's weight.

Jace surfaced from the fog and discovered he was horizontal again, but at least this time it was on his own bed. He activated his iratze. "If you answered me, Max, say it again. What cat?"

"The thing about your and Alec's bond being weird." Max was sitting cross legged on the bed at Jace's hip. "Everyone in Ops saw everything. Word's going to get back to Idris that something's up."

"Yeah, that's a problem for after we have Alec back." Jace struggled back up to his elbows. "Magnus."

Magnus, pacing overlapping paths at the foot of the bed with Izzy, turned at his name. Izzy, on her phone and threatening someone again, automatically detoured around him.

"I can't lea—" Jace heard the strain in his own voice. He dropped back down and stared at the ceiling. "I can either stay with him or block him out completely."

Magnus appeared almost immediately in his field of vision, leaning down with hands on either side of Jace's head. "Don't you _dare."_ There was an echo of thunder in his voice. If Jace had actually needed the reminder that Magnus was effectively a prince of Hell, today would have already done it. And he had a feeling Magnus was just getting started.

"I won't. I swear I won't, but you have to find him, Magnus. Burn down whatever you have to, just _find him."_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Magnus returns to the loft to meet up with Luke and Cat, Maryse arrives at the Institute, and the vampires awaken.

Luke was already at the loft and on the phone when a portal opened and Magnus stormed through with a murderous expression and no glamour on his eyes.

"Gotta go, Maia. Rouse everybody you can and get them on it." She was half-awake after a late shift and an early morning class, but she mumbled an affirmative before he ended the call.

Clary had called him earlier about Alec being missing, both for information and a heads up that Magnus was on the warpath. He'd been on his way to the Jade Wolf from the precinct and he'd immediately detoured to Magnus and Alec's loft. Then the latest text had just read, _**immediate danger, all hands on deck**. _ He didn't know yet how the situation had gotten worse, whether it was the Institute's response or if there'd been developments in the apparent kidnapping.

"Hey," Luke said when Magnus just stood there, visibly trying to get himself under control. "We'll get him back, Magnus. There's a lot of people on this. Maia's seeing if the pack can turn anything up."

Magnus looked at him for a long moment, then tapped at his phone a few times and handed it to Luke. The beating could have been worse, but Alec was clearly still feeling the effects of whatever they'd drugged him with and this was just the preliminaries. Luke handed the phone back but not before shutting down the video, exiting back to the home screen, and locking the phone itself. Magnus narrowed his eyes like he'd noticed exactly what Luke had done, but he didn't comment.

"Jace and Clary tried tracking him but Cynric is using blocking wards they can't get through. Not even with the bond."

"Wait, is he blocking _you_ from tracking him?"

Magnus nodded. "I already tried."

Clary's earlier text suddenly sounded more ominous. "He could still contact you with a location. Might just want you mad first."

Magnus started to answer him, then stopped. He took a deep breath and tried again. "I know Cynric. He has a nephilim at his mercy. Alive is not his end goal here."

A portal opened across the room and Cat strolled through with Madzie at her heels. "You're lucky I'm off today. What's the emergency?" Luke watched her take in Magnus' expression. She stiffened, her own face shifting to something far less genial and a lot more deadly.

"Magnus!" Madzie made a dash for Magnus, who was still fighting for control. Luke swooped in and caught her a few steps shy of tackle hugging him. Luke swung her up in the air, into his arms, and she was surprised but game enough.

"Madzie, you are getting so big! I won't be able to do this much longer!" He tweaked her nose and she rolled her eyes.

"You're so silly, Luke."

Magnus handed Cat his phone, the volume turned down low.

Madzie was just starting to tell him about a new trick she'd learned when Cat interrupted. "Hey, Madz? I'm going to have to help Magnus out today, so you'll need to stay with Jillian for a while, okay?"

"Okay."

Luke looked over to find Cat texting even as Madzie wriggled to be let down. As soon as she was on her feet, she made a beeline for Magnus. "Magnus, where's Alec?"

Magnus crouched down to her level. "Not here right now, sweet pea. I have to go get him. I'll make sure you see him soon though."

"Okay, I have a picture for him. I didn't get to bring it because we left so fast."

Cat opened a portal before Magnus could even try and answer that. "Off we go, Madz. Magnus, I will be right back."

Magnus managed a pained smile and a kiss to the cheek for Madzie before Cat took her through the portal.

Still crouched down, he looked up at Luke. "Jace can feel it."

"What?"

"Through the parabatai bond. For over a year now, Jace and Alec can," Magnus rose up, gesturing vaguely with one hand, "they can share physical experiences. That's how we knew it was happening even before the video came through."

"Wait, literally if it happens to Alec, it happens to Jace?"

"Send Raphael the video." Magnus unlocked his phone and tossed it to Luke. "I don't know how deep the connection goes. Once the bond opened up, Jace started reacting to the blows and was experiencing the effects of the drug they used. But Alec's lip was split in the video and Jace didn't have the same obvious injury."

"That's a hell of a fucking bond, Magnus. Parabatai bonds are all different but I've never heard of anything even close. Ghost stories, but not a real one." If his and Valentine's bond had been like that… Well, he'd probably be dead instead of a werewolf.

Magnus had unglamoured a compartment in his bookcase and was putting bottles into a small basket. "The important thing right now is it means Alec's not alone. He's—" Magnus had to stop and collect himself again, the bottles trembling briefly under his hovering hand. "He's not alone."

Luke texted Raphael with one hand and walked over to drop the other on Magnus' shoulder. "I know he's your Alec, Magnus, and you don't always like this reminder, but he's a Shadowhunter. He didn't end up Head of the Institute by never getting out of Ops. He and Jace are both mean as snakes when they're cornered and he will hold on until we can get to him."

Magnus scoffed. "That is snake slander." His attempt at levity was thin, but better than losing control. Particularly this early in the crisis. Magnus picked up a last bottle and closed the compartment.

Luke had forwarded the video to his own phone and he used that to send it on to Maia, spelling out how bad it was for Alec's short term prospects. He also added it would have a very negative ripple effect in the Downworld if Alec wasn't rescued in one piece. He had a brief thought, which was 50% cop and 50% ex-Shadowhunter, that said this was a good training opportunity for her. He grimaced and shook his head.

Another portal appeared and Cat returned. She plucked the last bottle Magnus had grabbed out of his hand and frowned at it. "Truth serum, Magnus?"

"My methods are non-negotiable, Cat."

"If you can't keep your head on straight, you'll blow up half this flat."

He snatched the bottle back. "I _can_ and I _will."_ He paused, then added, "Keep my head on straight, that is. Not blow anything up."

Cat held her hands up in surrender. "Promise me you won't use it lightly and I'll say nothing more about it."

"This situation passed that benchmark when Cynric took Alec off the street!" he snapped. "And I have other ways of leaving a trail of destruction as wide as necessary to secure Alec's release." He smiled suddenly, pivoted, and headed for his workroom. He called back, "Find me someone in the middle of this!"

 

* * *

 

You never knew who, or what, you would find on the other side of a fixed portal. Maryse had set her spine straight before she had even left Alicante and she radiated a sure confidence as she exited into the vestibule of the New York Institute. In this case, she could see Ops was bustling, but no one was looking her direction. She moved to the side of the hallway and into a shadow, using the cover for a moment to center herself.

The fire letter had only read: _Alec taken. Tracking efforts have failed._ The content itself wasn't alarming; angel knew her children had been misplacing themselves for years. But they also subscribed to the idea of asking forgiveness after the fact and that meant she rarely found out about disasters until they were completely out of control. Alec, at least, tended to think before he rushed headlong into a situation. It was part of why he excelled as Head of the Institute. He would also, however, run straight into the mouth of Hell after Jace or Izzy — or Magnus, for that matter — with no plan and nothing more than his bow and a witchlight.

Where this incident fell in the range of 'snuck out of bed _again'_ to 'literally disappeared into Hell' was impossible to guess without more information. That they'd sent a letter at all indicated it was uncomfortably close to the latter end and a whole cascade of worry had been consuming her since the moment she'd received it. She'd read it twice, calmly excused her self from the table, and, with measured stride and serene façade, gone directly to the Gard and the permanent portal. Now, finally away from prying eyes, she could take a few deep breaths.

It had been drilled into her as a child that emotional control was essential in a crisis. While her fear was a logical reaction to the situation, it was also a distraction and a significant impediment. Fear would not save Alec. Hidden in plain sight as she was, she took one more deep breath then drew her shoulders back, smoothed the last of the worry from her expression, and strode out of the shadows and into the Institute.

Ops was already at a moderately elevated alert status with a full shift of personnel moving around the workstations and an air of urgency. Whether it was because Alec was missing or because of a different crisis altogether was an unknown quantity, so her first priority would be to locate Jace or Izzy for further details. She grabbed the arm of the next person to walk by.

"Where is Jace Herondale?" she asked.

The young man froze like a prey animal. "Residential." He pulled his tablet in closer to his chest.

Perhaps she'd overdone the projection of competence. She smiled and thanked him, but he looked more alarmed rather than less. Hopefully he had no illusions about field work as his nerves were clearly not up to it. She ignored the squeak of relief as she turned and headed for the elevator. The location didn't bode well.

Walking down the hall towards Jace's room, she heard women's voices — Isabelle and Clary, presumably. She stepped into the room and then stopped, uncertain where to place herself since the three she expected, along with a pale and wide eyed Max, were all on the floor. As soon as Max caught sight of her, he straightened as near to attention as he could while still kneeling. It was an admirable attempt under the circumstances.

It also reminded her of Alec at the same age.

Alec had never quite known what to do with his body when he wasn't utilizing it as a weapon and had developed the habit of dropping into parade rest in any idle or uncomfortable moments. He still did so, the stance as natural to him as breathing. Of late, Max had started to do the same and it was like seeing a ghost, although they otherwise had little in common. Alec had developed the invisible armor so necessary to their world at an early age, but Max eschewed it entirely. He flung himself headfirst into trouble, usually with an impish grin or just outright cackling.

She had honestly thought the fourth one would be easier. She had thought he couldn't possibly be worse than the first three and their ability to end up in hot water up to their necks every time she turned around. She had been wrong. Fortunately, Max was exceptionally competent as well as brash and, with skill and charm, he could get out of most of the trouble he got into.

He looked neither competent nor brash at the moment. He was kneeling next to Jace, who was curled up in a ball with arms wrapped around his head. She frowned. The Assistant Head of the New York Institute was clearly in no shape to be running a rescue mission. She would need to take charge then, which both simplified and complicated matters.

She looked at Clary and Isabelle who were kneeling on Jace's other side. Clary looked nearly as anxious as Max had when Maryse had entered. Isabelle looked ready to burst into tears or lose her temper at any moment and was not bothering to pretend otherwise, but then she had never handled Alec in peril very well. She would need assigned to a more active role. Fortunately, Isabelle excelled at field work both on an individual level and in command roles.

"Consider this formal notice that I am taking temporary command of the New York Institute." She pulled out her phone to put in the senior overrides. Then she considered her options for a coherent and succinct debrief, none of which were particularly good. She'd grown used to Alec's brutally efficient style of summarizing a situation. She decided on a general address and to let the chips fall as they may. "I was advised that Alec had been abducted and that tracking efforts had failed. Whoever can best fill in the details and bring me up to speed, please do so."

Jace groaned and straightened out, collapsing back against the floor. His hair fell down into his face but he didn’t move to brush it away. "It's an old enemy of Magnus. We don't think they know Alec's Head of the Institute, or they just don't care."

"It's a warlock named Cynric," Clary added. "He sent video. After the tracking failed, we thought he was on water somewhere, but there are wards that have the same effect."

"He doesn't want to be found? At all?" Maryse asked, needing to clarify before she could deal with the alternative. It was suddenly clear why Isabelle was having so much difficulty controlling herself.

Clary shook her head. "Not so far. But Magnus didn't seem to think that was going to change."

"And where _is_ Magnus?"

Jace gave a shaky laugh. "Probably making people scream."

Max pushed Jace's hair back out of his eyes for him. "He went to rouse the Downworld and contact, uh, everyone, probably."

Clary spoke up again. "The pack is out searching. Luke's at the loft— at Magnus and Alec's. I talked to him a few minutes ago. Raphael is making calls and his clan will join the search if we don't have Alec back by sunset."

It took Maryse a moment to realize Clary was referencing Raphael Santiago, head of what had previously been Camile Belcourt's clan. She'd known Alec was working on Downworld relations, of course, but that level of assistance seemed unlikely even if the vampire leader had reached a level of grudging respect for the Head of the Institute. It was probably down to Magnus' influence. Still, sundown wasn't far off and the help could be valuable. She would need to confirm Santiago wouldn't risk crossing both the Institute and Brooklyn's High Warlock before she acted on any information provided.

Maryse waited for more details but the girls and Max just looked at her while Jace panted on the floor. She finally prompted them. "And the second in command of the Institute is obviously in no condition to be running the search for his parabatai. Would someone like to fill me in on why that is?"

Jace sighed. "Oh, right. Forgot about that."

Isabelle finally found her voice. "Jace can feel what’s happening to Alec through the bond. He felt it before we got the video footage."

He could _feel—_ Maryse kept her face blank as alarms went off in her head.

"I can see through Alec’s eyes, too, if we can open them," Jace said. "The left one, anyway. The right one's swelling shut. But there's not much to see, just the main floor of an empty warehouse. There's no defining characteristics. There's no noise, which is probably the wards. There's a smell of old dust, and grease, and blood. I think the blood's just mine. A lot of people are visible. More than I can count."

Maryse didn't miss the pronoun shift. She walked over and crouched down, carefully taking Jace’s jaw and turning his face toward her. His eyes weren't focused on anything, nothing in this room at any rate. The right one was bloodshot and both his irises were shining gold. She firmly reminded herself that emotions were distractions in a crisis and locked away the fear to be dealt with later.

She smiled at him and brushed his hair back properly. "Rest." She rose and looked at Clary and Isabelle. "Why isn't he on the bed?"

"We tried that first," Clary answered, "but he was more comfortable on the floor."

"He can't roll off the floor," Max added.

Maryse could see that Isabelle’s worry and frustration had been building while she’d been hovering over Jace. She would have to be removed from the room before she could even begin to think straight again, but her strong drive to physically protect her brothers would make that difficult.

"Very well. Clary, stay here and let me know if there are any significant changes. Max and Isabelle, with me." 

It wasn't a surprise when she protested. "What? No! I can't leave them!"

Maryse bit back frustration. "Isabelle! _With me."_

She realized immediately that, in her own impatience, she'd just poked at Isabelle's formidable temper. Fortunately, Clary's quiet, "Go on, we don't need to both be here. Help find Alec," ceded the ground in Maryse's favor.

Maryse actually expected the argument to happen in the middle of Ops. The higher Isabelle's temper, the less she concerned herself with presenting a united face outside the family. Impressively, they made it all the way to Alec's office with Isabelle still locked up tight. En route, Maryse deployed Max to the warlock's lair with orders to inform her of all updates, whether the Downworlders thought the Institute should know or not. She didn't actually expect him to report back, but at the Institute he'd only be watching Alec and Jace suffer. With Luke at Magnus' loft — _Alec's_ loft now too, somehow she still had trouble remembering that fact — he'd be both supervised and out from underfoot.

Once in Alec's office, she started checking the current duty rosters, patrol deployments, and weapons and food supplies while she waited for Isabelle to lose the last of her thin patience. Maryse had given it two minutes behind a closed door before she caved to the unfocused rage, but that deadline passed and Isabelle remained aggressively silent. Of all the times for Isabelle to find her self-control.

Finally, Maryse asked her if she knew when the last food supply run had happened. Maryse could see the information for herself (a few days earlier, which was good; they wouldn't need to arrange for more for several days if needed, even with the full staff on the premises round the clock), but Isabelle wasn't in a state to think that logically and it served nicely as a catalyst.

She immediately started yelling. "We need to be looking for Alec! He's out there—!"

Any other time Maryse might have let her bleed some of it off, at least for a moment or two, but they didn't have the luxury of time and Maryse's own patience was stretched thin. _"Isabelle Sophia Lightwood."_

There was a value in retaining the use of particular weapons to the most critical situations. That was proven by Isabelle stopping cold at the use of her middle name. Isabelle froze, expression intensely angry and her whip a constant, quiet rasping.

"I realize you're frustrated, but every minute you spend uselessly losing your temper is another minute your brother is being tortured. While I have no problem beating his location out of anyone I can lay my hands on, training and experience tell me it is neither a quick nor particularly effective method of gaining information. Track down anyone you know, find out if they've heard anything, and report back to me immediately. I will be making sure every last Shadowhunter body I can round up is present, armed, and ready to be deployed as soon as we have a location."

Maryse watched the all-consuming anger drain out of Isabelle as she shifted from a mess of wide open emotion to weapon hard. Her mental faculties had come back online and she was finally a soldier accepting orders. Isabelle nodded, turned on her heel, and left.

Maryse allowed herself a frustrated sigh over the intense management her children required. Then she picked the tablet back up and headed for Ops to raise the Institute to high alert.

 

* * *

 

The sun set and the vampires rose.

Raphael had stayed up past dawn attending to Clan business, which had made Magnus' wake up call at two in the afternoon less than appreciated. The truly rude awakening, however, had been the forced calm of Magnus’s voice. As soon as they'd hung up, Raphael had called a few contacts, trying to tease out if anyone had heard of someone making a move against the Shadowhunters and against the Head of the New York Institute in particular. No one had, but that wasn't surprising after the video had come through. Raphael had adjusted his parameters and begun preparing for battle.

Shortly after sunset, he gathered the clan for a summary of the situation. He gave a rousing speech (by his standards, anyway) outlining how the safety and security of the entire New York Clan was at risk. There were a few of the clan who were, in this case, more likely to join the other side rather than follow orders. Those, Raphael ordered to stay back, much to their displeasure. The rest were split between three groups: neutral parties, those who were reluctant but willing to follow orders, and a surprisingly large number who were outraged that someone had dared bring harm to Alexander Lightwood.

He'd known Catia had formed a rapport with Alec as Magnus had mentioned her stopping by the loft multiple times, but evidently she hadn't been the only one. On the other hand, Alec was almost as bitchy as Camille, and most of the clan were Camille's offspring, so perhaps it wasn't so surprising after all.

He made a mental note to never, ever share that comparison with Magnus.

In his speech, Raphael might have exaggerated the potential for the Lightwoods to go on a Downworlder rampage if Alec were tortured to death by a warlock. It wasn't something he'd be willing to bet against, though. Not in the case of the matriarch at any rate; she could be one of the coldest warm-blooded creatures he knew. She'd only accepted her children's choice of associations in the sense that she hadn't been able to change their minds and wasn't willing to lose what modicum of control she still had over them. The youngest was a wild card with his influences split between two extremes, but it was obvious that he was very loyal to Alec. Raphael didn't know Jace well enough to know how he'd react. He and Alec had their Shadowhunter warrior bond, though, so Raphael would be willing to bet on poorly. As for Isabelle… Isabelle would take it very badly. She would probably destroy less than Magnus would in the process, but it would change her and he didn't know what would be left when all was said and done.

Raphael didn't think he had exaggerated the potential for Magnus' reaction to Alec's untimely and bloody death, although it might not take the form his audience had likely imagined. Magnus had a great deal more power than the average New York downworlder really grasped. While he had claimed Brooklyn, and Brooklyn alone, as his territory, it would take little for him to extend his kingdom much further and most didn't realize how benevolent his rule was. The alternative — Magnus going cold and quiet — wasn't a great deal more palatable to Raphael. If he still used his lungs, his chest might have tightened up at the thought.

He hadn't been exaggerating at all regarding the Clave's reaction. They would be grateful for the excuse.

Raphael had no personal attachment to Alec Lightwood, but he did like and respect him. As it turned out, he was also very important to people Raphael either cared about a great deal or had a healthy fear of. The irony was, while Alec was an apex predator in the New York shadow world, Raphael suspected he still didn't realize he'd incidentally, and almost certainly accidentally, become a linchpin uniting most of the demon and angel blooded factions in the city.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clary's at the Jace half of ground zero, Max arrives at the loft as Magnus contemplates violence and mercy, and things are getting rougher for the parabatai.

As Clary watched, the bruise on Jace's right cheekbone returned, the skin swelling and breaking around his eye. For what felt like the hundredth time, she drew over the iratze she'd put just below the tracking rune, hoping the closeness to his heart would help. Each new application of the rune turned the skin raw and bloody before healing back over. The remaining mark had turned a darker black by now than any rune she'd yet seen.

The bruising faded back out again.

Jace — they? the parabatai? — could have activated Alec's iratze tattoo, but he — they? — had explained that miraculous healing when people were actively trying to hurt you didn't lead anywhere good. Which made a horrifying kind of sense.

Even if the lesser wounds were coming through the bond now, the big stuff thankfully still wasn't and iratzes were helping the pain. Half of it, anyway. She put her stele down and went back to trying to wrestle Jace's sweat drenched pants off. "Fuck, the rune cuts are bleeding through already."

Pants removal was complicated by Jace — or, rather, Jace's body — struggling against invisible damage. Even if the big stuff wasn't coming all the way through, they were still registering as some kind of phantom injuries. With Alec's hands useless and at least a couple of broken ribs, the best Jace could do was try not to make it more difficult. Clary scooted back and pulled at his pants legs from the ankles. She suspected one of Alec's ribs had punctured a lung, given the trouble they were having breathing.

She braced against the floor and pulled harder. She should have just cut the damn pants off him.

Jace grunted at a particularly hard yank, but the pants came free and he collapsed back with obvious relief. "They tore my shirt down from the collar but then they left it. The parabatai rune's still covered." She couldn't tell if it was Alec speaking through Jace or if they'd just lost track of themselves again. At any given point, it could be either one of them individually or the merged, parabatai version of their consciousness. There was no use in asking. It changed from one minute to the next and tended to confuse whoever she was talking to.

"Small mercies, particularly if it looks like this one." She tapped a finger on the glowing gold of Jace's rune, the top edge of it visible just above the waist of his boxer briefs.

"I'm not even sure cutting through one of the runes would break it anymore. We tried dying twice and that didn't do it. On the other hand, I don't really want to find out."

Clary took the basin of bloody water to the bathroom, dumped and refilled it, and grabbed a couple of clean washcloths on her way out. They'd cut around Alec's runes, the mocking outlines like a ghost of Alec superimposed over Jace. The cuts were mostly shallow, but then they'd taken their fists to the same areas afterward. Clary had watched the cuts all over Jace's torso split wider, bruises slowly blooming under his skin. Now the blood would start seeping from the cuts even before the cuts themselves appeared and part of her brain _really_ wanted to freak out about that. So far she'd managed to put that reaction off.

Kneeling back down beside Jace, she wet the washcloth and started wiping up the fresh blood. "At least half the Downworld is out looking," she said firmly. "It's going to be fine."

"Are you telling that to me or to yourself?" Jace asked— no, that was Alec being salty. He — they?? — rolled his head toward her. "Hey, it's always fifty-fifty. It's life. It's chance. It's okay."

Clary closed her eyes for a moment and thanked fate that she hadn't been raised a Shadowhunter. They had some seriously bullshit brainwashing running around in their heads. She rose up over Jace and put one hand gently on either side of his face. "I'm telling you because I damn well already believe it. Those are made up odds, and this is not remotely okay. The both of you will _hold on_ until they find that damn warehouse or so help me I will do whatever it takes to bring you back here just so I can kick your ass. _Do you understand?"_

She didn't point out that she'd already done it once. Despite the consequences the first time, she would again given even half an opportunity. She knew herself well enough to know that. For the sake of Jace and Alec, for the sake of Magnus and Izzy, she would tear down the gates of Heaven and drag their souls back out of the afterlife.

Jace — fuck it, _Jace and Alec_ — were staring at her, both eyes bloodshot now and, goddamnit, cheekbone swelling again. "Uh, yes. Understood."

She bared her teeth at them. "Good. Don't forget it."

 

* * *

 

Magnus frowned as he stirred the potion with slow, measured sweeps. The early stages were a delicate process but there was only one ingredient left and, by now, the mixture was far more stable. Under other circumstances he would have been pleased to have executed the touchy recipe while under mental strain without things exploding in his face. Tonight there was only grim satisfaction. In order to lock down his fury, he'd had to reach for his oldest, most iron clad controls, but the thick, bubbling mixture in front of him was proof that they had worked. Without that incentive, though, worry and anger were a raucous fluttering at the edges of his brain like a frantic flock of birds.

Despite what Luke thought, Magnus was under no particular illusions in regards to Alec. Well, perhaps some — love would do that to a person — but he knew full well Alec was well versed in the uses of violence. Alec sought to make changes among the Shadowhunters, but the system had raised him and set him on high. It was a thin line he walked between making those changes and retaining the power necessary to do so. The system itself was built on a particularly brutal version of mercy and Alec enforced it when his role demanded. A fact to which Magnus could personally attest after his own time in the New York Institute's cells. 

He still had a painfully clear memory of Alec's unflinching stoicism as he'd watched the Inquisitor torture Magnus. Of course, Alec had thought it really had been Valentine because he hadn't _believed_ Magnus, even— 

The surface of the potion rippled and Magnus calmed himself. Valentine had been the all-knowing bogeyman in many Shadowhunter closets for years. The revelation that he'd also been "Michael Wayland" hadn't been easy on anyone, and Alec had much of Jace's fear of his erstwhile father with none of the rose colored lenses.

Alec had an abundance of love and care that continued to grow by leaps and bounds but, as Luke had pointed out, he didn't get to be the Head of the Institute — and in a position to _make_ changes — by keeping his hands clean. It was remarkable enough that Alec's hands were cleaner than most, cleaner than Magnus' for that matter. True, Magnus had had centuries to accumulate his own skeletons but, given what he knew of Shadowhunter training, Alec's adolescence hadn't been particularly merciful. Especially as someone marked to rise through the ranks. Magnus would bet that Alec knew at least the theoretical administration and sufferance of 'interrogation methods' by the time he was Max's age, and the realities of both before he took the parabatai rune.

Even if Magnus had wanted to harbor illusions about Alec's innocence or lack thereof, he couldn't harbor them of Jace, and they were going through this together. As much as he'd seen of their vulnerabilities, the two of them were full grown Shadowhunters with all that implied. They were as well equipped to deal with these circumstances as they could be.

Magnus, for his part, would be adding to his skeleton collection very soon, one way or another. He liked to think he understood the consequences of his actions better than most Shadowhunters, but the end results were often the same. He'd started his tally younger than your average nephilim, for that matter.

The door opened part way and a slip of shadow entered, easing his way into Magnus' workroom. He took scrupulous care as to where he set his boots and that the stool he finally perched on was clear. Max had learned the hard way that the workroom was not a space to be trifled with.

"And why are you here, Maxwell?" Magnus asked, still stirring the potion.

"I'm spying." He was uncharacteristically, but understandably, subdued. The child was a menace with all the indoctrination of the Clave and five boatloads of cunning when he chose to use it. His adoration of Alec was the silver lining that might still save him.

Magnus looked up at him while continuing to stir. "You seem to still have a great deal to learn about spying. The first rule is that you don't tell someone you're spying on them."

"Mom sent me."

"Ah," Magnus reached over for the last ingredient and sprinkled it gently across the top, "Maryse has arrived at the Institute."

"She took temporary command. Clary's with Jace, and Mom and Izzy were about to start yelling at each other when I left. Jace reported that Alec is in a warehouse and there's lots of people, but that's all he could tell us."

Magnus deemed it time to let the potion rest at a simmer and left off stirring. He looked up at Max and realized he'd changed from his earlier training clothes to ones more suited for running about the city. Or, more specifically for a Shadowhunter, ones more suited to running around the city and killing things. All black to hide the blood and ichor. Magnus himself had done much the same. Before he'd even started the truth serum, he'd stripped off his jewelry and changed into clothing that was both easy to move in and dark enough to blend into shadows. Just in case.

There was a sliver too much of pale skin peeking out of Max's sleeves again. He was continuing to stretch out as he had been for the last couple of years, but he was still nowhere near his full adult height. The softness along his jaw had started to fade away, but there was still a roundness to his cheeks, the texture of his hair somewhere between the fineness of a child's and the thicker dark locks of his blood siblings. Nonetheless, he wore two obvious weapons, both rune etched and made of adamas: a holstered blade strapped to his right thigh and an expanding staff at the left side of his waist.

Excellent for killing demons and Downworlders alike.

Alec had been both proud and angry when Max had killed his first demon six months ago by rushing forward when he should have stayed back. Max had later been dressed down for breaking formation and risking the rest of the patrol, then congratulated on the milestone. In two days he would turn 15 years old and Magnus suspected that Max was weeks or even hours from his tally including something other than demons.

Cat suddenly popped her head in the room, holding Magnus' phone out to him just as he heard it chime with an incoming text. "One of the vampires tracked down an ifrit that's been working with Cynric. They have him gift wrapped. That text is the address where they're waiting for you."

He covered the serum, as much a safety measure as to moderate the evaporation, and took the phone from her.

"You'll be wanting the serum." He looked up, a bit surprised. She hesitated, but then added, "He's reluctant to part with any information, but he's wearing traces of Alec's blood."

Magnus closed his eyes for a moment and slammed down hard on his control. The mixture wasn't _that_ stable and now was absolutely not the time for an accident. Nor should he be expending power needlessly. He re-opened his eyes. "It's done, but it should simmer for another fifteen minutes or so."

The look Cat gave him wasn't a happy one, but she nodded. "I'll bring it to you as soon as it's ready and bottled."

He glanced at the address. "How thoughtful, they picked an address I'm familiar with. Or at least one nearby. You know the area, Cat?"

She sighed. "Yes."

As Magnus was quickly securing a small dagger at each ankle — just in case — Max appeared at his side. When Magnus raised an eyebrow at him, Max said, "I'm coming with you!" It was half defiant, half fury.

Magnus hesitated. He could bind Max and leave him there, safely out of the way. But to what end? To protect his delicate sensibilities? Magnus' eyes dropped to the weapons Max was wearing. Sayings about horses and barn doors came to mind.

"Come along, then, my feral little duckling." Magnus straightened up and slid his phone into a pocket.

Luke met him in the hallway, frowning at Max being close on Magnus' heels. "Magnus, he's a bit young for this."

"Have you been a wolf so long, Lucian, you've forgotten what it was to be raised a Shadowhunter? Do you really think this will be outside his realm of experience?" Magnus asked. Luke didn't look terribly swayed by that argument, but Magnus had little patience for born again morality when he was only moments from Alec's location being in his grasp. "If you're uncomfortable with this situation, I will completely understand you staying behind."

His tone could have been mistaken for solicitous under other circumstances. As it was, Luke narrowed his eyes at Magnus and said to Max, "Stay back and keep your mouth shut or I'll haul you out of there by your shirt collar myself."

Magnus didn't think a little dragging around would deter Max. He was, after all, the same child who had reportedly taken an early misstep in his last training run and completed it with two broken ribs rather than fail out by using a prohibited healing rune. But he didn't really think Max would interfere either, so he said nothing. He summoned up a portal. "We have at least twenty minutes to kill, gentlemen. No pun intended. Let's go make sure this ifrit has all the right information at the forefront of their mind."

 

* * *

 

Between the drugs, the beatings, and the touch-and-go consciousness, Jace and Alec had long lost the ability to control the bond. It seemed confused by the only action being _survive_ though and kept rising and falling on its own. It surged up when things got bad and then receded in the lulls, letting them surface. It didn't go away completely but was constantly restless as if it were rattling invisible chains. In the between spaces, they would suddenly find themselves side by side rather than a single parabatai.

Jace realized he was staring at his own ceiling at the Institute again, the view out of Alec's left eye visible as a thin overlay. He swam back down to that liminal space between them, curling up around Alec and sharing his pain.

The equipment that a couple of the lackeys pushed into Alec's line of sight were a good indication things were about to ramp up again. They'd made sure to set everything up obnoxiously loud to Alec's left, which was a nice touch. There wouldn't have been nearly as much anticipation if Alec couldn't see all of it.

"Hey, Clary?" His voice didn't have a lot of volume, but it was enough. The soft rasp of a washcloth stopped and she appeared in his field of vision. "Could you grab one of my belts out of the wardrobe? I think I'm going to need something to bite down on."

Her eyes went wide and she scrambled. A third lackey arrived, unrolling a long extension cord. In the Institute, Clary slid back down next to him with a belt.

"See you on the other side, buddy," Jace said to Alec.

He let Clary slide the doubled over belt in over his tongue and between his teeth even as he fell back into the bond rising up to meet him.

In the warehouse, the parabatai raised his head and bared his teeth in a mocking smile. A fourth lackey connected the power cord and turned on the electricity.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tide is due to turn. In this chapter, Magnus interrogates the unwilling informant, Luke observes Max, and Clary feels an unexpected kinship with Maryse.

The vampires had been eager to show off their prize to Magnus and they preened over the unwilling informant that they'd tied securely and stashed in the small back room of a closed woodworks shop. Luke swept the rest of the premises while Magnus cooed and praised them like they were some of his cats that had just presented him with a partially dead mouse. Once Luke was sure the area was clear of any unexpected guests, he returned to find Magnus drumming his fingers against his chin and studying the ifrit under the fluorescent lights. The ifrit looked like a low level thug, the kind who knew enough to be valuable but was invisible enough not to be immediately missed.

Magnus had the vampires bring him out to the larger, and mostly empty, main room where he conjured up four lit candelabras. After he had them drop the ifrit in the center, they scurried into the rafters to watch. Luke backed up into the darkness beyond the circle of light and kept one eye on Maryse's youngest.

Magnus himself was displaying surprising restraint so far, but Luke suspected it was more in interest of conserving power than anything else. No need to waste energy that might be valuable later when you were going to pour truth serum down someone's throat. Magnus pulled up a chair, cleaned it off with a dramatic flourish, and sat down with slow motion grace. It was the kind of move that someone might mistake for an overblown ego if they didn't know the power Magnus held. Judging by the increasing distress of the ifrit still hogtied on the floor, he knew exactly how bad things were.

Max wasn't displaying any signs of distress. He wasn't displaying much of anything besides intimidation.

Magnus hadn't been wrong — Luke knew for a fact that Max had already had his initial training in Shadowhunter interrogation methods. A few months back, he'd stopped by the Institute one evening and found Max unusually quiet, all but hanging on Alec's coat tails. Normally Max would be sprinting through the halls with a grin, escaping from whatever mischief he'd been up to, or in the training room, laughing as he tried and usually failed to get the best of one of his siblings. When Luke had asked Maryse if Max was feeling okay, she'd forced a smile and brushed over how he'd just had "interview techniques" lessons in Idris.

It had explained the way Max had flinched when he'd seen Luke. Those lessons covered the weaknesses of various Downworlders and how to cause the most pain with the least amount of work; if Luke remembered correctly, alpha werewolves got special mention. He hadn't thought twice about them when he'd been going through them himself — just another skill to master and perfect — but Max spent a lot of time in the Downworld. He had a very different perspective than Luke at the same age.

It wasn't going to get easier. Max wasn't far off from those memorable scenarios where one practiced applying some of those methods to fellow cadets. Sooner or later, he would be the cadet in question. There were iratzes freely permitted, but that just made everyone take things further than they would have otherwise, and while you could always tap out, the reality was no one dared. After twenty years of living in the Downworld and amongst mundanes, those particular scenarios looked a good bit different in hindsight.

Almost as soon as they'd stepped through the portal, Max's face had fallen into a blank expression that wasn't the forced, desperate attempt of a child trying to hide, but the calm certainty of someone accustomed to the role. His body language projected that he had the skills and lack of mercy to back Magnus up despite his youth. Once they'd moved into the main room, he'd settled into a modified parade rest a few feet back and to the right of Magnus. He had his knees unlocked, one hand on the hilt of his seraph dagger, and the other loose at his side.

The part of Luke that had once trained and given orders to boys just like Max, the part of him that had spoken to children about intimidation being half the battle, _that_ part gave Max high marks for his bearing and fight readiness.

The rest of him just found it sad.

 

* * *

 

As soon as Jace stopped convulsing, Clary drew over the iratze on his chest and then swiped at the tears on her face. It didn't look like the rune was even helping anymore. Jace remained unconscious and none of the obvious injuries faded. He was a bloody, bruised mess and the way all his runes were now glowing gold only made it look worse. She was just easing the belt out of his mouth when there was a small noise from the doorway.

She looked up and found Maryse standing there and staring at Jace, her expression grief stricken. Maryse's ability to compartmentalize in a crisis was practically a superpower as far as Clary had ever been able to tell, but this had apparently surpassed even her limits. She crossed the floor and knelt on Jace's other side, visibly fighting the tears welling up in her eyes.

"Any word?" Clary asked.

Maryse picked up the washcloth from the bowl of pale pink water. Wringing it out with trembling hands, she started cleaning the cuts on Jace's torso. It only took a few moments to wipe the blood off his skin, but Maryse seemed calmer for having been able to at least do that much. She put the cloth back in the bowl and dried her hands on the towel next to it. 

"Luke texted a short while ago and they have a lead," Maryse finally said. "The Institute is prepared for battle, we need only a location. Soon we will wreck vengeance and bring the wrath of the nephilim down on the heads of all those who would dare harm them." She looked away from Jace and up at Clary, her face relaxing into a serene smile. "When I trigger the alarm, bring your sharpest weapons and a willingness to deal death to anyone who stands in your way." Still smiling, she stood up and left the room.

Clary stared at the empty doorway for a moment and then looked down at Jace, who remained unconscious. "When you wake up, remind me to tell you how I felt kinship with Maryse today. I mean, I should probably be more disturbed by that speech? But, honestly, I really want to stab somebody for doing this to you, so it was more inspirational than alarming."

 

* * *

 

As he had been for the last 20 minutes, Magnus was questioning the ifrit with a kind and patient voice. The ifrit looked terrified of the soft-pedaled threat, but he was still refusing to talk. Max, like a good soldier, hadn't moved a muscle, but his presence hadn't gone unnoticed and the captive threw fearful glances at his visible runes and at the hand he had on his dagger.

A portal finally opened up and Cat walked through, vial in hand. Magnus raised his hand to take it but she held it just out of his reach. He looked up at her. The silent question had an equally silent answer, but Cat yielded the vial and backed up next to Max.

Magnus rose up from the chair. "Luke."

Luke stood up from the workbench he'd been leaning against and walked over to the poor bastard cowering on the floor. He took a hold of his hair and pulled him up to kneeling while Magnus held the vial up for a minute, letting the candlelight shine through it. Then Magnus went down on one knee so he was level with the ifrit. "One way or another, you were a dead man as soon as they smelled his blood on you. I could give you to the Shadowhunters and your death would be the hard kind of slow, but I need information. For the sake of securing Alec's safety, I will show you this much mercy."

Magnus stood back up. "If you would, Lucian, open his mouth for me."

Magnus opened the vial while Luke pried open the man's jaw. Then Magnus poured the scant contents into the man's mouth and Luke clamped his jaw back shut. The captive struggled, but that was why Luke was the one holding onto him. Even a vampire would have trouble wrestling loose of an alpha werewolf in this position.

It was a hell of a mercy Luke was enforcing. Truth serums not only forced honest answers, they also slowly liquefied a person's insides. They weren't proscribed by the Council, but only because they wanted the option to use them on occasion and needed someone else to do the dirty work. Dangerous to brew by any but the strongest warlocks, the Council viewed their application outside the Clave's purposes as the darkest gray of magic.

It  _was_ mercy, though. If Magnus had turned him over to the Institute, the best the ifrit could have hoped for was to be tossed into the City of Bones to slowly rot to death. For the sin of abducting and torturing the eldest son of an old family, the Inquisitor wouldn't sentence him so lightly.

After a couple of minutes, Magnus waved him off and Luke let go. The man slumped to the floor and whimpered. Magnus crouched back down and ran a finger across the man's jaw. "Now tell me, what is the exact street address where the Shadowhunter Alec Lightwood is currently located?"

The ifrit wheezed out an address that was in a mostly industrial area. It would make a full scale assault easier at least.

"Very good. Now, is Cynric also at the same address you just provided me?"

"He was when I left."

"And how many people are on site working for Cynric?"

"I don't know for sure, but about a hundred."

Luke's eyebrows went up. Cynric had managed to import a small army under the noses of the entire Downworld.

"What is the species distribution of the people in the warehouse with Cynric?"

"All sorts. Ifrits, warlocks, werewolves, lot of different seelies."

"How many of them are warlocks?"

"Not many. A dozen maybe."

Magnus patted the ifrit on the cheek and stood up. "Catia?"

One of the vampires emerged from the shadows behind Max and settled a hand on his shoulder. Max twitched in surprise, but then relaxed back down. Luke circled around to stand next to Cat.

"I'm afraid I've spoiled a potential meal as the side effects of this potion are rather fatal." The ifrit started struggling anew in the ropes. "I know you'll wish to assist in retrieving Alec, but I trust he," Magnus reached out a boot and nudged the writhing ifrit, "can be disposed of later?"

She laughed, as if it were a foolish question. "Of course. We have an excellent incinerator at the hotel."

"Thank you. If you still have that gag available you may want to put it back on him. There's going to be some screaming rather soon, although it won't go on too long. Cat—"

Luke interrupted him. "Magnus, we're going to the Institute."

Magnus froze and let his eyes slide over to Luke.

"Seconded," Cat said.

Magnus looked at them for a moment, magic sparking between his fingers, before he finally just turned and opened a portal. "Very well. Clan members, if you'd stay here and wait for word from Raphael, that would be best. Cat, Luke, and Max," he gestured at the open portal, "after you."


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magnus joins forces with Maryse, the assault on the warehouse is planned, and everyone moves into position.

Magnus swept into Ops with Max, Luke, and — if Maryse wasn't mistaken — Catarina Loss behind him. As he came up the steps to the mezzanine, Maryse could see how openly he was flaunting his warlock mark. She raised an eyebrow at him. "I trust you finally come bearing news, Magnus." She looked down at her tablet and made some random adjustments she'd have to revert later. Petty power plays were so often the most effective.

"Oh, Maryse," he said, "I come bearing an _address._ If you're nice, I'll let you help."

She stopped and looked up. That was, admittedly, more than she'd expected. She triggered the Institute wide alarm.

"Isabelle is already in the field and I have 26 Shadowhunters armed and ready for battle as well as operational support for the same. Also, we are talking about my child. That the New York Institute will be part of this retrieval is not up to your games."

"As long as you're willing to be a team player, then I have no problem with the New York Institute's assistance. You'll be joining forces with Luke's pack, Raphael's clan, and my own people. Izzy is already on site, actually, along with Luke's second in command. They're establishing a staging area near the location where Alec's being held as we speak. The Downworld will begin gathering momentarily."

He did keep surprising her. "And do you have any idea how many enemy combatants there will be?" A message came through on her tablet from Clary that Jace was being transferred to the infirmary by the Silent Brothers and she was on her way to Ops.

Magnus waved his hand, turning to observe the rapidly assembling Shadowhunters below. "My informant was unaware of the exact number but he reported around a hundred."

"A _hundred—_ This informant could have been lying to you."

"No," Magnus turned back around to look straight at her, "he couldn't have. Given his role in things, I would have brought him to you as a present but I'm afraid he's… indisposed."

Those eyes of his were damnably hard to read, but Luke and Max behind him were grim enough that she felt safe in assuming 'indisposed' translated to 'deceased'. Unfortunate, as Maryse would have preferred to have been present. Magnus had the information, however, and hadn't rushed straight into rescue, causing a disaster in the process. She would let it go this time. "Do you have a plan, as well?"

"A half dozen of my people should be able to take down any wards he can manage. Then full assault on all sides before he has time to martial forces. I'll go in and retrieve Alec—"

"No," Luke interrupted. Magnus glared at him but Luke didn't back down. "You and Cat are the two most powerful warlocks we have by far and you'll be busy dealing with Cynric. _I_ will go in, retrieve Alec, and get him to safety."

"He'll most likely be unconscious," Clary said, coming up behind them. "We need to assume he'll have to be carried." Her eyes were red from crying, but she was fully armed and seemed to have a good grasp on her usual impetuosity.

"All the more reason for me to go in." Luke didn't even question why Clary was so certain. "I can easily carry even Alec with no magic or runes required."

"And I can go in with you, cast a rune portal, and we can bring him straight back here to the infirmary."

Luke frowned. "It would be easier to get him out of the building first. Creating a portal in the middle of a fire fight is—"

Maryse cut him off. "Clary is right. The sooner Alec is evacuated, the better."

Luke was frowning at her now, but she calmly met his gaze and made no effort to justify the assertion.

Magnus, who had been studying Clary, spoke up. "If Alec's in the open, I can put up a ward around him to keep most everyone out. I can make sure you get through, but I won't have time to fine tune it. You'll need a rear guard just in case anyone else does."

"I can do it."

They all looked at Max.

Maryse looked at Magnus. "What did you say the chances were of someone getting through that ward?"

"Slim." Magnus paused. "It's probably the next best option to tying him down to something."

Maryse sighed and closed her eyes. Max was all but fifteen and, while she could confiscate his stele and confine him until morning, it would only delay the inevitable. "Fine." She opened her eyes and looked at Max. "You'll portal back here with Luke and Clary."

Luke didn't look pleased, but he didn't voice any formal objections. "Maia's setting up a staging area and starting to form a perimeter a block out. I'll need a sword for the trip in. Preferably a non-seraph blade if you have one."

"Have you even used one in twenty years, Luke?" Maryse asked.

"Yes, Maryse, I have. Jocelyn and I used to spar almost weekly to keep up our skills. I don't, however, carry my own swords around with me."

It was one step up from nothing, at least. Years of "almost weekly" and exclusively one-on-one sparring wasn't even close to adequate for a Shadowhunter heading into an active battle. Hopefully his werewolf speed and strength would compensate for his lack of runes. And if not—

"We'll send you in with a support team for outside the ward," she said. Luke had been an excellent warrior at one time, but she didn't feel like betting Alec's life on that given the drastic changes of time and circumstance.

 _"Weekly."_ Clary, clearly startled, shook her head. "I thought you guys were going out to dinner and a movie. Yes, we have some in the armory."

"Biscuit, I have to say that I'm a little worried about your observational skills," Magnus said. "Before we go in, I'll need a drop of blood from the three of you to tune the ward. And I would recommend that Izzy lead the support team." He punctuated that statement with a painfully obvious glance at Max. Fortunately, Max wasn't looking.

"I'll let her know." Maryse focused on her tablet to send Isabelle a message both about the support team and that she would be Max's back-up.

"Great!" Magnus' voice took on a manic urgency. "So we're ready to go. Someone can get Luke a sword. Cat, you can deal with positioning our people to take down the wards. I can start portaling people out—"

"Magnus"

At Jace's strained and thready voice, they all turned. Having seen the condition he was in earlier, it didn't surprise her that he was being held up between two Silent Brothers. They'd clearly wiped him down before bringing him out, but the lack of blood just better showed the cuts and bruising. He looked even worse than when she'd last seen him. Now his hair was lank with sweat, his skin was tinged gray under the light of every last rune glowing, and his irises were visibly bright gold even from twenty feet away. He was repeatedly gasping in little sips of air like he couldn't take a full breath.

Maryse felt herself go pale and she straightened her spine against the sudden sensation of her stomach dropping out. Behind her there was a sharp, aborted noise that she was sure came from Max but she didn't trust herself to turn and check. Instead, she clasped the tablet tight to her abdomen with both hands to hide the trembling. Max was going into his first battle and it wouldn't help his readiness to realize how badly his commander was shaking.

Magnus had frozen for a moment and then rushed to Jace with his hands fluttering like he wanted to touch but didn't dare. He finally set his forehead against Jace's and they exchanged a few words. Almost as soon as Magnus backed up, Maryse saw Jace's eyes roll back as he sagged down, unconscious again. One of the Silent Brothers swung him up into their arms and they carried Jace away, back to infirmary.

Magnus still had cat eyes when he turned, but something about the way he carried himself made the grief and fear obvious. He walked with utmost control back to stand next to Clary, who was watching him with a grim expression. Magnus slipped his hand into Clary's and asked, "Are your people ready, Maryse?" His voice had gone hard with anger.

"This warlock, Magnus. I don't need you to bring him back here. Just make sure he suffers."

Magnus looked at her. She _still_ couldn't read him, but the set of his mouth and tilt of his head were sardonic. She guessed he was unimpressed with her edict.

"Swear to me you will do everything in your power to ensure the current and future safety of my son, Magnus."

"Ironic coming from the person who first put a weapon in his hands."

"Magnus"

"As if I don't value his life above my own?"

_"Magnus"_

He sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes. "Fine. I vow to take far better care of Alexander than some people I could name. Which today includes making sure everyone in the Shadow World knows that there are significant consequences to using him as a pawn for any reason. I will do my utmost to ensure that Cynric does not have an easy death."

It was insulting, but that was hardly noteworthy and beside the point. As a promise, it was sufficient. "Thank you. Now open the portals, and let the battle begin."

 

* * *

  

It was an autumn night, dry with an edge of crispness that was cutting through the lingering mugginess of the daytime and all the associated ripeness of a large city. Fortunately, the air wasn't moving at street level. What little breeze occasionally came through, Maia had taken into account when choosing a staging area and the construction site they were gathering at was downwind of the target. It had an enclosed space to the center large enough to hold everyone, the walls shielding the gathered crowd and glow of portals from any enemy patrols with sharp eyes. Given the parameters and short amount of time she'd had to work with, it was well chosen. There was a reason she was his second.

The staging area was pitch black save for the city lights and thin moonlight that was filtering in through a window cut high in one wall. The werewolves and vampires had divided themselves up into the two darkest corners of the space while the warlocks, most of them with standard mundane eyes, had clustered near the one patch of light falling to the floor. The Shadowhunters had runes to compensate for their lack of night vision, but there was also bloodshed imminent and they'd placed themselves at the door in their eagerness for battle.

Luke could guarantee they were also, to a one, oblivious to the fact they were giving the rest of the space's occupants the impression that they were guarding the door against anyone leaving. Magnus was all but shoving the last group of Shadowhunters out through the remaining portal though, so the tension would take longer to escalate than it would to just get everyone moving.

A grim Izzy had tried to pull Clary away almost as soon as they'd come through, demanding an update on 'the situation'. Clary had shook her head. "Luke saw Jace. He's figured it out if he didn't already know." Then she'd calmly given a bullet point list of injuries she'd either witnessed appearing or that Jace had mentioned while drifting in and out of consciousness.

Standing next to her, Max had automatically fallen back into the parade rest he'd adopted earlier. His eyes had been focused on the distance, but a couple of hard swallows had given him away. Luke would lay money on Max breaking the line as soon as he saw Alec, but a ward would keep him from seeing too much, too early.

The list wasn't pretty. It was longer than he'd already guessed based on Jace's visible injuries and it explained why Clary had been adamant about evacuating Alec as soon as possible. It didn't make Luke feel a great deal better about Jace and Alec's apparently mutating parabatai bond, either. There were always rumors in Alicante, the kind you heard as urban legends. There were tales of bonds gone wrong and of parabatai that couldn't handle the runes, or ones that fell into the bond and never found their way back out. He'd heard them all once upon a time, everyone eager to tell him ghost stories about how it was all going to go wrong. The irony was it had all gone _very_ wrong, just not in a way anyone had predicted.

Maia walked up to them, eyes shining green through the shadows. "Looks like we've got everyone. We'll be needing to move out soon before people start wanting to practice and we end up with a friendly fire incident."

"We need to move fast regardless," Luke said. "Once everyone's in position, the warlocks will need a few minutes to drop Cynric's wards. As soon as that happens, I'll give the signal and it's everybody straight in. Maia, send Kaylah and Ashawn over here, they'll be on the support team, and ask Cat to send over one of her warlocks. The warlocks aren't going to be able to move nearly fast enough to avoid being scented by their wolves, so team them up with the pack and get them into position." He saw Maia wince, but she kept her opinions to herself. "Clary, tell Raphael that his people have 15 minutes to get into place. Izzy, you already have a few of your people picked out?" She nodded. "Good, send them over. The rest of them," he nodded at the eager cluster of Shadowhunters that were armed to teeth, "light 'em up and send 'em out."

Izzy's whip slithered from her wrist and into her hand. "The signal?" she asked.

Maia snorted and pointed at Luke. "He's the signal."

They hurried off to open the floodgates and Luke turned to Max. "Are you ready for this?" he asked, relaxing back on his spine and crossing his arms.

Max bared his teeth in response. _"Yes."_

"Good. We'll be going in as straight to Alec as possible. There should be a lot of cover and distractions, and Magnus is likely to be a much bigger target, but that doesn't mean it'll be smooth sailing. Anyone comes at you, defend yourself but don't get distracted putting them down. Let the support team move in. You don't make it in there with us, we don't have a rear guard inside the wards."

Luke watched him bite back the automatic, _Yes, Sir!_ Technically, Izzy was leading the support team in part because the blood she shared with Max meant she could take over if he failed out or needed assistance. Either Max hadn't realized that or was letting the misdirection stand.

The occupants of the darkness emptied out into the night, all of them as silent as the grave with only the blurs of the paler skinned among them to mark their passing. Within fifteen minutes, Luke was huddled down in an alley a block out from the target. Magnus was situated at the front with a single escrima stick in one hand and the other already wreathed in blue. Clary, with sword in one hand and stele in the other, was at his right arm and a half step behind. Max was tucked into Luke and Izzy's shadows and carrying the sword he'd traded out for his usual dagger. Behind him, the support team was gathered up.  

Luke felt the wards fall like a concussive blast as a shock wave exploded outward. Tearing back the veil on a hundred bodies, even a full block away, was briefly deafening to both his ears and his nose. He tightened his grip on the sword and took a deep breath. Then Luke threw back his head and let out a howl.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No hesitation, no mercy.

The New York Shadow World poured into the warehouse by smashing through windows and skylights, tearing open doors, and, in some cases, by making openings where none existed. The main doors fell to Clary applying the largest and brightest opening rune Luke had ever seen; the lock didn't so much disengage as the doors exploded inward and were left hanging in their frame.

Magnus and Clary strode shoulder to shoulder straight into the melee. They exercised no hesitation and no mercy: a flash of Magnus' magic to the eyes blinded anyone who dared attack from head on and Clary put down each attacker permanently. Usually with a single sword stroke. Once people started coming at them in twos and threes, Magnus backed her up with the escrima he carried, exercising blunt force straight to the head or to the heart. The impacts were hard enough the attackers dropped either already dead or damaged enough they would be soon.

Luke and Izzy were directly behind them, guarding their flanks. Izzy, with the most difficult role, was also responsible for directing the support team and keeping Max from getting in over his head. Luke was glad to have her at his back. He'd seen her in action before and knew she had the situation awareness, speed, and skill to pull it all off. 

Max was making one of her tasks easier so far. He was stashed between Luke and Izzy, with the support team that was dogging their heels forming a safety net. He had darted out for precision strikes a few times, but he didn't go too far and he reeled himself back in quickly enough. His restraint was admirable given his inexperience.

As far as his own experience went, Luke was realizing a bit late that he'd never had a practical application of Shadowhunter muscle memory driven by werewolf instincts in the middle of an actual battle. Fortunately, he had the balance required to avoid all the bodies Magnus and Clary were leaving in their wake and the steel blade he carried was well honed. It cleaved through flesh nearly as easy as adamas.

Once they were about seventy feet inside the walls, they hit an empty patch of floor. Luke saw Magnus do a quick survey of the layout around him before he opened up a portal and was gone. Just before he completely disappeared, though, an unfamiliar wolf slid into the gap between Izzy and the portal. Luke lunged, but it was too late. The wolf had managed to grab the back of Magnus' shirt and tumbled through after him.

A few seconds later, the wolf reappeared, shoved out another portal that opened a few yards ahead of them and twenty feet up. He survived the concrete, but he didn't survive Clary severing his head from his body.

"There!" Clary shouted moments later over the din, and Luke followed the point of her sword. A bright blue dome had appeared to the northeast of their position. He altered his trajectory accordingly, trusting Izzy to make sure Max was still pointed the right direction.

One of the Shadowhunters called out a warning right before a burst of offensive magic came in at chest height and they ended up sliding in low through the ward. The entire support team dropped, then arrayed themselves around the perimeter and held position. Inside the ward, the sounds of the fight were muted and their view of the rest of the warehouse was tinted blue between the bodies rebounding off the magical barrier in showers of static.

As soon as he was on his feet, Luke turned and grabbed the back of Max's shirt, catching him a split second before he lunged toward his brother. Luke spun him around and took him by the shoulders. "Guard the rear!"

Max was pale and wide-eyed, but he nodded. He raised his bloody sword and backed up to give himself sufficient room to maneuver should anyone come through from the either side.

Luke turned, got a good look at the chair in the center of the dome, and stopped. He gave Max full points for no more reaction than he'd had considering Luke had seen corpses that looked better than Alec Lightwood did right now. He was alive, at least, based on the brief sway of his head and the small gasps of air he was taking, but his skin was bone white and his lips were leeched of color. Clary had listed off most of the surface damage he could see but, in addition to the ropes binding his wrists and ankles, there was a small dagger through each bicep pinning him to the over-sized wood chair.

Clary had already dropped her sword and was up next to Alec, growling and reaching for the first dagger while steadfastly ignoring her own tears. Luke grabbed her wrist just as her hand closed over the hilt.

"No, wait. I'll hold him still, you cut the ropes at his ankles, then the ones at his wrists. Once you have those free, _then_ pull the daggers out. He's likely to start bleeding as soon as you do and I don't know how much he has to lose so be prepared to form a portal as quickly as you can."

She nodded and unsheathed one of her combat knives and her stele. Luke braced one knee across Alec's thighs and used his hands to ease Alec's shoulders back against the chair. At the new pressure, Alec's arms twitched upward. Fresh blood welled up around the blades but between Luke's hold on his shoulders and the ropes at his wrist, the additional damage was minimal. Alec's eyes flew open. His pupils were almost fully dilated and the thin rings left of his irises were the same bright gold Jace's had been.

Luke started up a victim soothing word patter. "It's just me, Alec. It's Luke. Luke and Clary and Max. We're going to get you out of here. Clary's got your ankles free and she's going to cut the ones at your wrist now. I need you to stay still for me, okay?"

Alec's head rolled toward Luke but his eyes didn't focus.

"Yeah, it's just me holding you down. You're fine. Magnus and Izzy are cleaning up the bad guys here and we're going to portal you back to the Institute where your mom and Jace are waiting. Now we've got to free your arms." Luke pulled his knee off Alec's legs, braced his left forearm across Alec's collar bone, and held down his right wrist above the worst of the damage to his hand. "Ready, Alec?"

Clary yanked the right dagger out. Blood welled up from the puncture wound and ran down Alec's arm.

"Okay, that's one down, one to go—"

Clary yanked out the left dagger.

With Alec free, Luke slipped one arm around his back, one under his legs, and swung him up out of the chair.

Clary immediately took two steps back, pivoted to the side, drew her portal rune, and cast it.

Luke called, "Max!"

Just then, a seelie came through the ward, sword raised.

Max, who'd been turning toward Luke, caught it out of the corner of his eye and blocked the down stroke just in time, buckling a little under the seelie's strength.

Luke froze but Izzy skidded in through the ward behind Max.

"I've got him!" she yelled back over her shoulder, whip already lashing out at the seelie's ankle. "Go!"

Luke made for the portal, Clary on his heels.

 

* * *

 

There were two Silent Brothers waiting when Luke stepped through the portal and into the training room. The far end of the space was set up as a temporary treatment area but as soon as Luke had Alec down on the litter they were carrying, they all but ran for the infirmary. It was never a good sign when Silent Brothers were moving that fast.

He and Clary made their way out of the marked off area and into the confusion of the treatment area where a few field medics were dealing with injuries that iratzes couldn't handle for one reason or another. They passed off their bloody swords to the waiting runner for cleaning just as Maryse hurried up the steps in a clatter of heels. She must have given up battle command to a subordinate. She'd definitely given up all attempts at appearing calm.

"Was he conscious?" she asked as they made their own rapid way after the Silent Brothers.

"He was breathing and he showed some responsiveness on site," Luke reported, "but he passed out before we came through."

"And Max?"

"Caught up with a seelie, but Izzy was at his side when we left and he was holding his own. Maryse," he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder and turned her toward him, "I'm not going to lie. He looks bad. But he's safe in the Institute infirmary, he has Jace holding him up, and he has the Silent Brothers to put him back together."

Maryse closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

"You ready?"

She opened her eyes back up. "As ready as I can be." She smiled faintly and slipped from under his hand to walk into the infirmary.

Inside, the Silent Brothers were clustered around Alec. One was cutting away the remains of his clothes while a couple of others worked with steles and a fourth cleaned off sweat and blood. Clary was already at Jace's side where he was laid out on a bed next to Alec's and still unconscious. His runes were all glowing a steady gold like they had been earlier, save one; the sheet had been folded down to reveal the parabatai rune over his hip bone and its glow was pulsing as if to a heartbeat.

Beside him, Luke heard Maryse give a small gasp and he turned to see the Silent Brothers had shifted enough to give her a view of Alec's condition. He was still roughly the color of the sheets he was laying on, but there were already two major healing runes on his chest and the frantic pace of the activity around him had slowed to merely urgent. Maryse had clenched her jaw and was standing very straight, looking as if she were keeping herself from falling apart by sheer willpower.

He put an arm around her shoulders. "He's safe and he's in good hands."

Her weight shifted, leaning into him.

They paused their work on Alec for a moment to shift him to a clean gurney and move the first one out of the way. That at least meant the bleeding was stopped and he _was_ movable without doing further damage. They were good signs, assuming the lack of bleeding wasn't just because he didn't have any blood left to lose.

Brother Petyr approached Maryse. She straightened up, weight shifting back away and spine going straight again as if it would help her brace for whatever news was coming.

 _He is stabilized for now,_ Brother Petyr said. _He has survived so far thanks to the connection he shares with his parabatai. There is a great deal of work to be done, and it will take time, but the immediate danger is past._

Luke had seen too many victims take a sudden turn for the worse to be completely reassured. A person could survive torture only to die from the trauma of rescue. That Alec had survived this far was, however, better than the alternative. He had made it through the last ten minutes and now he had to make it through the next ten. Then he could make it through the ten after that.

As Brother Petyr returned to Alec's bedside, Clary came up next to Luke. She was a mess of blood splatter and tear tracks but looked unbowed. "Are you ready?" she asked.

Luke suddenly remembered there was still a fight to wrap up. He turned back to Maryse. "Do you want me to stay?"

She looked away from Alec's bed long enough to give him an exasperated look. "No, I don't want you to stay! I want you to go back to that warehouse and make any of the enemy combatants still standing sincerely regret they ever decided to invade this city and kidnap my son!"

Luke blinked.

"And remind Magnus what he promised me."

"Will do." He turned to Clary. "I guess I'm ready."

 

* * *

 

The battle ended after Magnus hit a distracted Cynric straight to the back of the head with an orb of magic that was as heavy and solid as Magnus could manage. Cynric had dropped to the floor unconscious and Clary and another Shadowhunter had immediately swooped in to bind and gag him. There were a few pockets of resistance, but those of Cynric's people still alive largely surrendered as Cynric was drug roughly across the warehouse and tied to the chair they'd used to bind Alec.

Magnus had actually been surprised that Cynric had only acquired some bruising on the trip considering how stabby biscuit got when she was angry. Of course, she'd already perforated a lot of people today, so maybe she had some of it out of her system.

Sunrise being only a couple of hours off, most of the vampires had disappeared almost immediately after the action wound down. The warlocks, many of them drooping with exhaustion, hadn't been far behind. Luke's pack still had energy to spare, though, and a vested interest in evicting Cynric's people from their territory. They were snapping and snarling alongside the Shadowhunters as the mess of live prisoners and fortunate dead were mopped up. Izzy and Maia were working together to direct the clean-up efforts, Maia having shifted back so she could issue orders to the non-wolves more easily. She'd retrieved a sundress she'd stashed outside first, though, so she could do it with a bit less nudity.

Max, he'd discovered, hadn't made it through the portal when Alec had been evacuated. Magnus had gone looking for Luke and seen Max trailing after Maia, evidently assigned as her enforcer. The point of his sword was standing in for a wolf's bite against anyone not inclined to take her growls seriously while she was human shaped and barefoot.

Magnus winced. Only a werewolf would think a lack of footwear wasn't a problem in this situation.

Magnus finally managed to track down Luke. After they'd made it past the initial attackers, Magnus had portaled to a higher vantage point and thrown down the ward as soon as he had a grasp on Alec's location. He hadn't actually seen any of Alec himself at the time, just the back of the chair and the dark tousle of his hair. Considering Jace's condition earlier, that was probably for the best. At least in terms of the control Magnus had needed during the fight.

Luke told him Alec was in the hands of the Silent Brothers and that they'd stabilized he and Jace for now. Unfortunately, Magnus knew Luke well enough to know when he was trying to sell something that was technically true with the most positive spin he could manage while being privately worried. Magnus just nodded and waved him off. He noted that Luke immediately went to have a quiet conference with Cat. It wasn't reassuring considering how the two of them had in common victims and emergencies. It also wasn’t reassuring how Cat's expression had remained grim as Luke kept talking.  

Magnus firmly told himself he was speculating as Clary came up to him with a bloody sword in one hand and stele in the other. "I'm going back to the infirmary. Do you need anything? Do I need to take anything? Anybody?"

Magnus shook his head. "No. I'll deal with Cynric and join you. Wait—"

Clary had already started to open a portal but she turned back, letting the half drawn rune fall to ash and sparks.

"How did he look?" Magnus asked. It was a foolish question, and unfair, but he didn't take it back.

Clary hesitated. He'd looked bad then. She finally offered, "Pale, but better than Jace in some ways." Then she stepped in and hugged him. Clary was wearing even more blood than he was and the tackiness of their skin and the stiffness of their clothes were a vivid reminder of how many people they'd killed between them in the last couple of hours. They surely smelled like a charnel house, but it was impossible to discern amongst an entire warehouse that smelled of blood and sweat and other bodily fluids. She pulled back and smiled before turning, casting a portal, and exiting stage left.

It was reassuring that she would be there until Magnus could join them. Clary could probably annoy Alec back to consciousness if necessary. There was no way around how he'd feel a great deal better when he could see Alec for himself, though.

With the battle won, the reckoning had come due, and a few minutes later Magnus was pacing in front of Cynric. In front of the chair where they'd bound Alec. Where they'd battered and beat him. There was blood all around Magnus, but the blood on the chair was _Alec's,_ which Magnus was partial to and preferred inside Alec as much as possible.

There were severed ropes lying to each side of the chair that Magnus paused to kick away and set on fire. Wet with blood, they mostly smoldered.

Magnus resumed pacing.

He was torn. Regardless of the vow he'd made to Maryse, he needed to make sure the Shadow World at large understood that Alec Lightwood was not an easy pawn to be used against him. That leveraging his love for Alec would come at a _very_ high price. The kind of price that made the most hot-headed enemy stop and reconsider. A significant portion of New York's Shadow World had risen to the occasion and painted the floor of the warehouse scarlet, leaving the survivors at the questionable mercy of the Council, but Cynric was the statement piece. The one everyone would remember and the rumor that would spread. Cynric's reckoning was the key to safeguarding anyone Magnus held dear. Especially Alec.

The problem was, what Magnus really wanted right now, more than anything, was to be at Alec's side. To be done with this day of fear and ugliness. To hold Alec's hand, to feel the warmth of his skin, and to listen to him breathe. The desperate need to crawl into bed next to Alec and sleep with him in his arms was lodged like a physical thing at Magnus' core.

"Suggestions?" Magnus finally asked the group of observers leaning against the table a few steps from the chair.

The group was made up of Luke, Cat, Raphael, and Max, all various levels of bloodstained. Of the five of them, Cat, who had primarily been wielding her power from a distance, was wearing the least blood by far. Ironic, considering the condition of her scrubs at the end of a shift at the hospital. At the opposite end of the spectrum was Max, who looked like he'd near bathed in it. Consequences of gravity, being short, and having to stab upward. It had dried down to a rusty red-black under the warehouse lights and was flaking off his skin like a crumb trail of death. He was perched cross-legged on top the table, fidgeting with Alec's stele that they'd found lying on it, discarded and forgotten.

"We could dismember him slowly," Raphael suggested, cleaning blood from under his nails. "Or bury him indefinitely. He wouldn't even need a blood line." Raphael sincerely objected to the disruption of the city on this scale.

"We could recreate all the injuries he inflicted on Alec," Luke offered. Magnus turned to him, lifting an eyebrow, but Luke just shrugged.

Magnus looked at Cat. She was sitting on the table next to Max, one foot drawn up and her arm over her knee, ostensibly staring off to northwest corner of the warehouse. When she looked back, her expression was cold and without any conflict. "I have no suggestions," she said, which wasn't a surprise. Then she added, "nor dissensions. If you choose multiple options then there are some helpful spells I could recommend." _That_ surprised him.

A red and black blur whipped past Magnus and he heard the _crack_ of bone breaking even before he'd turned back around. Raphael already had an arm around the waist of a swearing, scrabbling Izzy. It would seem the last of the prisoners had been transferred to the spartan comforts of the Institute's cells.

Cynric's yell of pain was muffled by the gag as blood poured out of his now broken nose.

Raphael curved himself around Izzy in his effort to hold her back despite her still active runes. "I admire your straightforward way of dealing with the problem, Isabelle,” he said, “but perhaps now is not the time to chance accidentally getting in the way." Izzy kept glaring at Cynric but she stopped fighting and let Raphael pull her further away from him.

Magnus paced a couple of more turns while Cynric whimpered. Finally he turned toward the table. "Well, Max? Everyone else has offered their opinion, or made a direct contribution. What is your suggestion?"

Max was pale under all the blood, his grip on Alec's stele white knuckled. He tore his eyes away from Cynric with obvious difficulty and looked at at Magnus. Then he straightened up from his slouch like he was coming to attention. "I suggest you let someone else handle it," he said firmly. "Alec needs you right now and he's more important."

Magnus had, in all honesty, expected something bloodthirsty and imaginative. But he'd momentarily forgotten that Max had very distinct priorities. Magnus smiled. "Excellent answer, duckling."

He turned back to the chair. "Cynric! So glad you could join us. There are a couple people here to whom you should be introduced. The feisty one off to your left is Alec's sister, Isabelle. Thank you for that contribution, Izzy. The blood will be useful. The half grown predator over on the table is Alec's brother, Max. Congratulations, you've given him his first opportunity to be blooded in battle. To tell the truth, I think he'd rather you kept it given the circumstances, but it's a feather in his cap regardless."

Magnus snapped together the magic to form a crude pentagram behind the chair. It would be serving as a one-way door, so anything more elaborate was technically unnecessary. Part of him cringed at others seeing the inelegance of the work, but conserving power was vital until a crisis was past. In this case, that meant until such time as he could check Alec over himself.

"There is another brother that couldn't be here with us today," Magnus continued, swiping up up some of the blood under Cynric's nose with two fingers. "You should be particularly grateful to Jace since he's quite possibly the reason Alec's still alive. And, Cynric, if Alec weren't alive then I would have all the time in the world to visit all those suggestions and a few more besides." He knelt down and smeared the blood across one of the lines, adding a flare of magic to chase itself around the lines and open the door.

He stood back up. "As it is, I'm outsourcing." He called up an obnoxiously red bow tied around Cynric's chest, which was completely necessary. One couldn't skimp on conveying a message to Asmodeus. Then he used a foot to tip the chair over backward and into the perimeter of the pentagram. Cynric's yell of surprise morphed into one of fear as soon as he realized the floor wasn't stopping him. A flash of hellfire rose up to meet him and he disappeared with a whiff of sulfur, the screaming fading into nothing.

"Enjoy your long, painful relocation to Edom," Magnus called after him. "Tell father I said hi." Magnus swiped clean the pentagram, safely closing the door, and turned back to his audience. "I have better uses for my energy right now." He opened a portal. "Anyone else coming?"


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a bit more drama and then some well deserved rest.

It was a group of five that emptied out into the Institute's training room. Raphael stayed back to make sure the last of his people made it out in a timely manner and to take himself back to the hotel before the sun rose. Magnus could feel weariness starting to nibble around his own edges, but he was eager to see Alec.

They went straight to the infirmary despite all of them being far too filthy for a sick room. That sort of consideration was of less consequence to Shadowhunters than it was to the other races, but he was sure Cat was having opinions to the back that he'd hear about later.

In the infirmary, they found Maryse, Clary, and a couple of Silent Brothers clustered around two beds. Clary turned as they came in and her face filled with desperate relief. "Magnus!"

"Hello, biscuit, how are the patie—" Magnus came up next to Clary and stopped. The remains of Alec's clothes had been cut off of him and his skin had been cleaned. The dark iratze emblazoned over his heart and the more complicated runes beneath it were evidence that they'd started healing work but, despite those efforts, he was still covered in open wounds and bruising with his skin a white pallor. The sheet was folded down below the parabatai rune, which was glowing a steady gold.

Magnus looked over at Jace and found him in much the same condition.

Cat's voice tried to get his attention. "Magnus."

Magnus looked back at Alec.

"They're both stabilized," Maryse's voice had the barest tremble, "but only temporarily. They've reached the point where the energy the runes require would draw more from them than they can spare."

"Magnus."

 _The internal damage was more extensive than anticipated._ _The additional internal heat generated by each use of a rune_ _is also a concern at this point. We are uncertain how long the stabilization will hold._

"Magnus."

All Magnus could see was Alec bruised and battered, white as death. He was numb for a long heartbeat, one long second when he could feel a towering anger and grief rising up like a wave. He tried to breathe, but his lungs were seized up tight. He felt himself leaning forward, toward Alec, saw his own hand reaching out for Alec's face—

Suddenly, there was a hand holding his wrist.

"Magnus, _stop."_ Cat was leaning over the bed and holding him in place. Magnus managed to take in a hard, desperate breath.

She tugged firmly at his wrist. "First, we will both wash our hands, and then we will see what we can do."

Magnus tore his eyes away from Alec and looked over at her. He was surprised at what he found. Cat guarded herself closely around most Shadowhunters, she glamoured her marks and chose her words carefully when she spoke at all. But now, despite the fact they were hip deep in nephilim, the natural blue of her skin was on full display and her hair, braided and twisted up on her head, shone white under the lights. Glamours were minor magic, but they still required energy; it was why he'd been running around naked eyed all day. A Cat without her glamour in the middle of the New York Institute was in crisis mode.

"He is _alive,_ Magnus. If we are to keep him that way, we must act quickly. Put your head in order."

He let her pull him to the sink near the two beds, desperately trying to gather himself into the state of mind he'd need for the healing ahead. This would be deep work and it had already been a very long day. Focus would be crucial.

"Magnus—" This time it was Max invoking his name, the inflection in his voice half panic and half threat. It sounded like he didn't know what to do with all the fear. Magnus looked back at him. Max, still drenched in the blood of his enemies, had eyes as wide and bleak as a street urchin.

It was easier for Magnus to slip into a calm and confident façade for Max's sake than it was for his own.

"Pay attention, Max." Magnus rolled up his sleeves while Cat scrubbed in like she was going into an operating room. "Warlock healing depends our energy rather than the patients. Which is to say that Cat and I can heal Alec in a way that will put much less stress on his body. Now, for addressing wounds, your hands should always be as clean as possible. Your average Shadowhunter overlooks this because it doesn't matter as much if you're using steles to draw iratzes and healing rapidly, but it matters for everyone else, particularly mundanes. And, case in point, when you reach the limits of Shadowhunter healing runes."

He replaced Cat at the sink, the warm water sluicing away the traces of violent deeds and making way for healing instead.

"We won't be touching Alec's wounds directly in this case but blood and foreign material can interfere or cause unwanted results. Given his condition, it's a sensible precaution."

Magnus finished scrubbing the remains of Cynric out from under his fingernails.

"I could clean my hands with magic, but best to save the energy when there's water and soap right here, hmm?"

Cat had taken up a spot by Alec's right elbow and was already working on getting a sense of the damage. "Yeah, there's a lot here. Magnus, I have more reserves so I'll work on the major damage. You work behind me tying up loose ends."

Clary stepped up beside Cat and offered one of her hands. "Can I help? Already washed earlier." Cat looked at her for a long moment but then nodded and took it. Clary's irises almost immediately started shining bright gold. A moment later, Izzy slipped up next to Magnus and offered one of her own, now clean hands. He dropped down to healing with one hand and took hers with his other, the sudden, bright fizzle of of her energy cascading through him.

He followed after Cat, cleaning up the dust and debris of her reconstruction, dancing fast and loose from one minor problem to the next. It wasn't long before he surfaced abruptly to Izzy stumbling, her hand dropping away. Likely the post-battle adrenaline crash had come due. It was a different hand that replaced hers. He looked over, blinking a little in the sudden change from an imaginary mental construct to needing his eyes to focus.

"Maryse?"

"Back to work, Magnus," she said gently. "You have my child to save."

He frowned at her in brief confusion, and then remembered what she was offering. He accepted the contribution of her energy, a deep and steady flow that revived him and let him refocus. He lost track of time for a while after that, of anything outside the work of repairing a thousand small insults gathered in swarms around the deep injuries that Cat was finessing back together and smoothing over. Eventually he felt his knees weaken, but he could feel Alec's heart was beating strong and steady. His ribs and lungs were back in their proper operational configuration, both hands were fixed, the last of the drug Cynric had used was cleaned out, the internal bleeding was not only stopped but repaired, and much of the surface bruising had receded. There was still a dozen or more cuts to heal and Cat was repairing the broken cheekbone, but Alec was going to be okay.

He backed out, his eyes struggling to focus even in the relatively low light of the infirmary. He let go of Maryse's hand as he turned towards her, her energy dropping aw—

Everything went black.

 

* * *

 

Alec woke up. His very first instinct was to reach for a weapon, but there was no quiver between him and the surface underneath him. He froze, trying to remember what he was carrying and who he was fighting. The confusion was enough time for him to realize he was looking up at the ceiling in his bedroom at the Institute, and also that the bed was unusually crowded.

The pain faded in after that, every last inch of him aching with a warning there would be significant consequences the first time he attempted to move. It was definitely Jace lying to his right. The parabatai bond was at rest but tying them so closely together that Alec was surprised he was alone in his own head. The familiar body curled up tight against his left side was Magnus. He was face planted into the side of Alec's rib cage with his arms locked around Alec's waist. It was a bigger bed than used to be in this room, but there was no way Magnus' legs weren't half off the end of it.

He steeled himself against the inevitable burst of pain and lifted his head, curling up just far enough to brace on his right elbow. He winced as a surprising number of muscle groups he didn't usually think about suddenly reminded him of their existence.

"Alec!" Izzy, it turned out, was on the other side of Magnus, tucked up in a chair next to the bed. She dropped the book she'd been reading on the floor and fished her phone out of the seat. "How are you feeling?" she asked, typing at lightspeed.

"Like I had a major injury repaired by the Silent Brothers, only all over." He glanced down at his chest and found the advanced healing runes he'd expected. He looked over to find the same on Jace. Clary was sitting in a chair on the far side of the bed, folded over with her head on Jace's stomach and sound asleep.

"Alec?" Max popped up from the rug between the end of the bed and the desk against the wall. He had creases on his face from whatever he'd been sleeping on. "Alec! You're awake!"

"Okay," Izzy finished her texting and sprang up, leaning over both the side of the bed and Magnus. "How's your pillows? Here, hold on—"

"My pillows are fine, Iz, I was just—" Alec sighed and let Izzy lean over and fluff the pillows behind his head before he dropped back down, his arm already starting to shake. "Do you feel better now?" he asked. Max climbed up on the bed, one knee on either side of Alec's right leg.

"No, not really." She smiled at him. This close he could see the tiredness around her eyes and the brittleness of her expression. "You totally skipped out on our shopping trip yesterday. Hey, easy, Max, you break him and I'm telling Magnus."

Max froze and glanced over at Magnus, possibly checking that he was still asleep, then carefully eeled down to lay sideways in the sliver of space between Alec and Jace. Jace didn't open his eyes, just lifted his arm to give Max more room and then settled it back around him.

"I did miss our trip." Alec freed his own arm from under Max with effort and let it fall on top of Jace's, half burying Max in the bed covers. "Sorry. We'll have to try again."

"Yeah, well, I'll pick you up this time. It might be a while before we allow you to go anywhere unsupervised."

Alec huffed out a laugh and then winced over the pull in his stomach muscles and around his ribs. "Pretty sure Jace has me on an invisible leash right now."

"Damn straight I do," Jace said in a tired, raspy voice.

Izzy reached a hand across the bed and Jace managed to more or less give her a high five.

Alec rolled his eyes. "What happened?" he asked. "I mean, besides what I was there for."

Izzy leaned back and stashed her phone away beside her in the chair. "When you didn't show up, I got worried and called Magnus. We'd all just figured out you'd been grabbed when—" She gestured to the far side of the bed. Alec assumed she meant Jace channeling him through the parabatai bond. "How much were you aware of? Going on here, I mean."

He shrugged automatically and then winced at the sparks of pain. "Whatever they drugged me with threw me for a while. I remember flashes of Ops in the beginning, then you, Clary, and Max in Jace's room. I remember Mom coming in. I have no idea how I got back here."

She hummed thoughtfully. "Well, the short version is that no one's liable to think kidnapping you is a good idea any time soon." The arms around Alec's waist tightened ever so slightly. "The longer version is that Magnus had a bunch of people out looking for you while Mom was lighting up the Institute. After Magnus came up with an address, then the Institute and a good portion of New York's Downworld stormed the warehouse. Luke and Clary evacuated you, Magnus got the drop on Cynric, and we all came back here."

Alec stared at her.

Izzy rolled her eyes. "Put that expression away. You're on the wrong track."

"A 'good portion' of the Downworld? How many bridges were burned for this rescue?" He demanded. "You can't tell me that many people spontaneously decided, in less than 24 hours, for the sake of a _single Shadowhunter,_ to not only work together but risk their lives!" He started to lift up off the bed and abruptly remembered that wasn’t an option. He dropped back down with a frustrated groan. "How much of a mess am I going to have to clean-up, Iz? I've worked hard on our relations with the Downworld and it's all been destroyed in _one day?"_

Izzy sighed, then leaned forward and captured the hand he had laying against Magnus' back. "I swear to you, Alec, no bridges were burned. We might even have built a few new ones. Yeah, I raised some hell but, honestly, I didn't have to try that hard. I had a lot of back-up, and I don't mean Shadowhunters. Luke and Raphael were already on board, but so were a lot of their people. The rest had their own reasons to defend our mutual territory. We didn't threaten any Downworlders to get them there."

She smiled at him like he was being particularly dense but she loved him anyway. "I don't think you realize how many friends you've been making over the last couple of years, Alec. Not to mention the people who came to bat because of how important you are to other people in this room. You're not just any Shadowhunter, big brother."

Alec rolled his head back to stare at the ceiling.

"We knew from Jace how little time we had and we made a rescue happen. I have no qualms about my actions over the last 24 hours. I don't think you will, either."

"You looked pretty bad after you got rescued," Max piped up, his voice muffled under Jace's arm. "Even after the Silent Brothers did their thing." He squirmed back up to lean on one elbow, face brightening with some of his usual enthusiasm. "Magnus and Cat did some warlock healing on you though! After Magnus fainted, Cat had to take care of him, but then the Silent Brothers finished fixing you up. Oh, and I have your stele. It's on the desk."

Alec rolled his head to the side again and looked at Izzy. "He's fine. Just really, really exhausted. You'll get to recover together for, like, the next week."

She let go of Alec's hand and scratched gently at the back of Magnus' neck. Then she sat back in the chair, lifted her feet, and tucked her toes under Magnus' ribs. Alec felt a little huff of air along his side. Alec realized someone, probably either Cat or the Silent Brothers, had gotten Magnus into some of Alec's sleep clothes he kept stashed here.

"Max, buddy," Jace said, "if you don't stop moving I will find the energy to toss you off this bed."

Max grumbled but settled back down between them just as Alec's mom walked in. She perched one hip on the sliver of bed open behind Magnus' knees and reached over him to put a hand on one of Alec's ankles. Alec instinctively tightened his arm around Magnus as if he needed protecting while he was in no condition to protect himself.

"Hello, darling, how are you feeling?" she asked.

"Fine," he said. At her exasperated look he added, "All considered. Just tired and aching all over."

"Well, you'll have plenty of time to recover. You and Jace both are off duty for the next week."

Alec groaned. He'd hoped Izzy had been exaggerating.

"I'll make sure things are running smoothly until you get back."

"Wait," Jace opened his eyes, "why am I being punished? I wasn't the one who went and got himself kidnapped."

"This time," Clary pointed out without lifting her head.

"Yes, _thank you,"_ Alec said. One kidnapping and everyone forgot how Jace could get into more hot water before breakfast than Alec could in a quarter century.

"It's not punishment, Jace, it's a precaution," his mom chided. "You don't have to lay around all week, you're just off duty. But speaking of duty, I can't stay. I need to go see about replacing the supplies that were used, redoing the duty rosters for the next couple of days to make sure _everyone_ has plenty of time to recover, finishing the warehouse clean-up, and dealing with prisoner transfers."

"You'll have a summary for me?" Alec asked.

"Of course, but right now the only thing you need to worry about is resting and recovering your strength. To that end, there should be a big meal for everyone here any minute. And don't think just because you're being quiet, Max, I somehow managed to overlook you right in front of me and the fact you snuck out of bed. _You're_ supposed to be recovering by being _asleep."_

Max tried to wiggle deeper into the covers, then yipped when Jace elbowed him.

"He's fine," Alec said.

She frowned but apparently decided to let it go. "You have a new phone beside the bed. If you need anything, please use it."

"Yes, mom."

She patted his ankle and straightened up. "Good." She laid a hand briefly on Magnus' arm, then stood and walked out.

Izzy waited a few seconds before whistling quietly. "Wow, there is definitely a stamina rune happening there."

"Like you're one to talk." Alec had seen the fresh one on her forearm.

"Hey, I slept while Clary took the first three hour shift." Clary mumbled some kind of agreement into Jace's stomach. "Oh, here's the food."

The food ended up being large plates of pasta alfredo and thick slices of fresh bread for all of them. At the smell of it, Alec abruptly realized he was starving. With Izzy and Max's help, he was able to leverage up to a sitting position against the headboard with Magnus adjusting his grip the whole time to whatever part of Alec he could reach without actually opening his eyes. Clary slumped back into her chair, yawning, and Jace managed to sit up all by himself, even though Max hovered like a mother hen.

"You should probably just get used to having Magnus attached you for the next week," Izzy warned him.

Alec smiled. "Well, right now I'm pretty sure he needs to eat as much as the rest of us, so he's going to need to stop pretending to be asleep and let go long enough to do that."

Magnus, now face planted against Alec's hip, opened his eyes. They were the warm gold Alec got to see every morning, and they stayed that way despite the fact he and Alec weren't alone. Everybody around them was familiar enough with Magnus' warlock mark, but glamouring them was such a habit for him that the lack spoke pointedly to how much of his magic he'd exhausted.

Max, now sitting between Alec and Jace's legs and directly in Magnus' line of sight, leaned down and waved.

"Duckling," Magnus acknowledged, then sighed and leaned up with a wince. He swung slowly over Alec's legs to all but fall down beside Max, then folded his legs underneath him with obvious effort. He wasn't quite slumped down, not the way Max was beside him, but it was miles away from his usual grace. Alec could see a slight tremble in Magnus' arm as he took the plate Izzy handed him.

They all ate steadily through the food, Magnus looking sadly at the water Izzy gave him. ("Okay, one, I don't have a martini handy, and two, I'm not convinced they're medicinal, even for you." Alec was very sure Magnus wanted wine rather than vodka, but he was also very sure he wasn't getting in the middle of it.) By the time they were finished, there was little left on the dishes Izzy piled on the cart and pushed out into the hallway.

Izzy came back in and grabbed her book and phone, then leaned over to give Alec a tight hug and a kiss on the cheek. "I love you, Alec."

"Love you too, Iz." He held onto her for a minute, burying his face in her long hair and letting it settle a piece of his heart.

After she'd straightened back up, Magnus asked, "Are you taking Max tonight or is he staying here?"

Alec frowned.

Izzy didn't miss a beat. "He's gonna be with me. Come on, Max, you're crashing in my room."

Max, who'd been falling back asleep against Magnus' shoulder, reluctantly straightened up and climbed off the bed. Before he could get far, Alec called to him, "Hey." When Max turned, Alec held his arms open and Max rushed over to hug him. "We're probably going to have to delay your birthday party for a few days. Or at least your present from me. Sorry, buddy."

Max, with his face hid in Alec's neck, tightened his arms around Alec's shoulders. "Eh, you're a pretty good birthday present, so I guess I could let it slide this time."

Alec smiled. "Sleep tight, Max."

After they'd left, Jace more or less fell sideways and rested his forehead against Alec's shoulder. "You're not allowed to get kidnapped anymore. As your parabatai, I forbid it. Literally everyone will back me up on this." Jace's iron hard anger had sustained and fed Alec's own stubbornness while he was in enemy hands, but now his parabatai was a sea of exhausted love and gratitude with a strong undercurrent of relief.

Alec freed his arm and slung it around Jace's shoulder in a half hug, sending reassurance through the bond. He kissed the top of Jace's head. "Get out of my bed, Jace. We need more room."

Jace gave a breathless laugh and then groaned. "I know I feel better than you do and that still hurt." With Clary's help, he sat back up, swung his legs around, and made it to his feet. Leaning on Clary, he was to the door before he turned back around, half dragging her with him. "Magnus—"

Magnus looked up and lifted an eyebrow. "Blondie." His tone was insolent, a smile tipping at the corners of his mouth.

Jace grinned and shook his head. "Yeah." A laugh fizzed through him that never made it to the surface. "Goodnight you two."

Clary gave them a last, sleepy wave over her shoulder as she helped him out of the room.

With the bed down to just the two of them, a little more warmth was starting to sound like a good idea. Magnus agreed and together they tugged the blankets out from under Alec.  After Magnus retrieved the migrated comforter, they up curled up together under the covers. By the time they settled, Alec felt like he'd used up what pitiful energy reserves he'd had and Magnus didn't look much better.

"What was up with Max?" he asked, suddenly remembering the earlier exchange between Magnus and Izzy.

"Max had… a very long day. Which I will tell you about tomorrow. But he didn't need to be alone tonight."

"Somehow, I think you had a pretty long day, too." Alec ignored the ache in his arm to thread fingers through Magnus' morning soft hair.

Magnus' tired expression went sorrowful, his eyes full of grief. "He had you for 15 hours. He took you and kept you for 15 hours because of _me."_

"Mmmm, yes, that was explained. In detail. To be honest, I wasn't impressed by his motivations."

"Alexander!"

"What? I was being serious." Alec kissed Magnus, the brief brush of lips reminding him of how close he'd come to never having another chance to do so. He kissed Magnus again just because he could. "He also _only_ had me for 15 hours because of you. Thank you for coming to my rescue."

Magnus opened his eyes back up. "I was hardly the only one."

"You didn't use up every last scrap of your magic by sitting around and daydreaming."

"No, but I did have a lot of help." He mouth curved slightly with the ghost of a grin. "Raphael may suspect you're attempting a coup of half his clan."

Alec didn't know what to say to that.

"I assured him you wouldn't know what to do with a whole passel of vampires if you had them."

"Thank you?"

Magnus raised one hand and ran his thumb under Alec's eye, around his cheekbone, and across his lips. The laughter in his eyes died back again. Alec didn't mind being in danger. He was a soldier; he'd been in danger most of his life. He _did_ mind watching Magnus have to deal with it after the fact. Alec had been on the other side of that line and he knew how hard it could be. Most of the time Magnus handled it really well, but this one had clearly shaken him.

Magnus opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He leaned in to give Alec a quick kiss, then settled back onto the pillow. "When you read the reports from today, and whatever you hear—"

Alec stopped him right there. "Somehow I don't think you were endangering kittens, Magnus."

Magnus rolled his eyes, then dropped his gaze down.

"Hey." Alec tilted Magnus' chin up to look him in the eyes. "I might not have been conscious for the battle, but I've been in the middle of them before, remember? And I also know that there can be things a lot harder than a clean fight. I'm not new at this, Magnus."

Magnus gave him a shaky smile and tucked his head up under Alec's chin. Alec shifted enough to slide one arm between the curve of Magnus' neck and the bed, pulling him in tight. He wrapped his arms around Magnus' shoulders with a happy sigh. He was exhausted and aching from head to toe, but there was literally nowhere else in the world he wanted to be.

"I love you, Alexander." Magnus' voice was muffled slightly by Alec's collarbone.

"I know." Alec felt a pang of gratitude for the fact that he _did_ know. That it was a thing he was absolutely sure of. "I love you, too."

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to forbid you from dying on me anytime soon, though. My heart can't take it."

Alec's own heart hurt for a moment, but he shoved it back. That was a pain for another day. "Jeez, between you and Jace, I can't have any fun."

Magnus pulled back just enough to squint at him.

Alec grinned. "I got kidnapped today. I'm allowed to be a little giddy."

Magnus shook his head and burrowed back into Alec's chest.

"Go to sleep, Magnus. I'll still be here when you wake up."

"I'll hold you to that, Alexander."

**Author's Note:**

> I waffled on using the "torture" tag but ultimately decided not to as it's all off-screen. There is unrelated violence but it doesn't meet my own criteria for "graphic depictions". Neither category exceeds canon representations.


End file.
